


Tell Me I'm Home

by jewelledfoxes



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, a little anti-jonerys at the start, but also I wrote most of it before S8 so? does it still count??, but we'll get there in the end, evryone's happy in the end, honestly way too much of it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-18
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2019-07-13 22:40:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 28,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16027451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jewelledfoxes/pseuds/jewelledfoxes
Summary: Jon comes home, Dragon Queen in tow, and Sansa worries about the fate of her country and, more importantly, her family.





	1. 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this after the season 7 finale aired as I had a lot of pent up anger and needed to get it out somehow so it's not exactly a masterpiece. Also I just straight up ignore bit of cannon I'm not so into. Deal with it I guess.

It’s too late to be sounding bugles – the whole castle sleeps – so a guard comes to wake her. The boy (for he can be no older than she is) looks nervous as he tells her. She wonders if they drew straws as to who would have to wake the Lady of Winterfell in the middle of the night. She’s not angry at him though and thanks him, a smile spreading across her lips. “I’ll find someone to cover your next watch,” she promises after she has asked him to wake her sister too and his eyes widen in response. She laughs. Arya’s scary.

She dresses hastily and meets her sister down in the yard.

“Should we wake Bran?” Arya asks.

She shakes her head. “No, let him sleep.” He’s travelled a long distance and it wasn’t easy – he needs the rest. That’s what she tells herself but she knows the real reason she didn’t send the timid squire for him is that she’s not sure if Jon will be ready to meet Bran, or at least what Bran has become.

Her heart is beating fast and she begins picking at her fingernails as her men order for the gates to be opened. Although she’s convinced herself that she’s annoyed with him and she’ll stand with cold eyes and pursed lips she can’t stop the smile when she sees him ride in, even with the silver-haired queen who rides atop a stunning white horse behind him. She had heard stories of Aegon the Conqueror and Rhaegar ‘The Last Dragon’ but she has never seen a Targaryen for herself, outside of paintings. Even in the low light her hair seems to shimmer as if there were silver laced through it. Sansa feels like a girl again because before her is a woman just like a princess from the songs. She – like Sansa – is merely a child but she holds herself with the authority and confidence of a ruler. She’s captivating – every bit the beautiful, clever, talented Targaryen queen Sansa had always been envious of.

She doesn’t miss the way he helps the queen from her horse, hands around her slim waist, or the look they exchange or the way their fingers brush, tangling and untangling in an instant, as if by accident.

Arya runs to him as if she were 9 again and he lifts her easy enough, wrapping her in a tight embrace and spinning her round until she’s giggling which is something Sansa hasn’t heard yet in this new Arya. She smiles to herself as she makes her way over to them all.

He sets her down and notices the sword strapped to her waist. Sansa shakes her head, wondering why she brought it with her, but when he looks up a wide grin sets on his face. It’s something of a surprise for a man who is always so solemn.

“Needle,” he remarks.

She nods. “Stick ‘em with the pointy end.”

It seemed impossible but somehow his grin widens. He pulls her into a hug again and says something into her hair.

Sansa smiles to herself. She looks over to Daenerys to find her looking straight back. They both turn away immediately and look back to the two before them.

When they break apart Jon turns to Sansa. She embraces him despite the tension that hangs between them because of the silver-haired girl in the corner of her vision.

When Jon introduces her Sansa tries not to hear, “This is the one I betrayed you for; this is the one I sold our home for.”

(Maybe she doesn’t try so hard.)

She smiles anyway. It’s not this woman’s fault that she is beautiful or that she’s willing to use it to get what she wants. No, this world is kind to no one – least of all girls – and to have anything you must learn how to use all of the weapons you have to take it and never let go.

Sometimes Sansa wishes she had learned earlier and sometimes she’s glad she didn’t.

Pleasantries are exchanged. Arya stops glowering long enough to wish the queen a nice stay and hope the weather will be kind. Sansa’s impressed. Her sister had never been good at diplomacy and she had not known Arya was capable of hiding disdain.  
“We’ve prepared rooms in the west wing,” Sansa informs; “it’s warmest there.”

“Thank you,” Daenerys says with a delicate smile. “I’m so grateful for your hospitality and I’m excited to see some of this kingdom Jon has told me so much about.”

 _Jon_ , Sansa contemplates, _not the King in the North, not even Lord Snow. Just Jon._  
She doesn’t voice her concern though, just offers to take her to her room. “I imagine you’re tired,” she says with a smile. They walk quickly and in a near silence that they will blame on the exhaustion despite all knowing better. They walk past the Lord’s chambers and Sansa informs Daenerys that she can come and ask if she needs anything. She doesn’t plan to not tell her where Jon will be but finds herself walking past his rooms without a word. They show Daenerys to her room and drop Arya off and then it’s just the two of them, like before he left except not at all. He walks her to her room – ever the gentleman. The door creaks as she pushes it open.

“Goodnight,” he tells her.

She turns to him. “May I request your presence, only for a few minutes?”

He sighs. “Can it not wait for the sun? It has been a long journey.”

“The world is changing faster than I ever thought it could. I fear that by morning it will no longer be the same place.”

He nods and follows her through the heavy door, closing it behind him. They’re no stranger to this. Back before all this they would pass long evenings just sitting and talking or remembering or planning or even just working separately. She had found his company reassuring. They had been the last two and together they could’ve taken on anything.

Of course everything’s different now. It’s not just two of them anymore; Arya and Bran are home for a start and then there’s the southern queen who seems to have lodged herself between them. His presence is uncomfortable now; it makes her uneasy.

He hovers by the door, not wanting to venture too far into the room. She stands maybe five paces in front of him, by the foot of the bed, and while her solemn expression is not necessarily unfriendly, it is certainly devoid of the warmth she once looked at him with. He glances quickly at the chairs that sit before the fire but doesn’t presume to ask.

“You have pledged the North to her.”

It wasn’t a question but he answers with a curt nod anyway.

“And when will you tell the Lords?”

“Tomorrow, as soon as we can get them together.”

She winces a little at the thought of it. She can see their reactions already. He is their King and they trust him but she is a dragon, sister of the man who stole away the North’s sweetest flower, took a girl of fifteen from her family, raped her and left her for dead. It was her father who burned Rickard and Brandon Stark alive and it was her ancestors had come across the Narrow Sea and snatched away the North’s independence all those years ago. She is not the sins of her family but the North remembers.

Her lips press into a tight smile. “They won’t like it,” she informs him

“Aye, I imagine they probably won’t.”

She grits her teeth and turns away. Is that all he has to say? Has he not thought to ask her what she thinks? Has he not thought to turn to the person who knows the Lords of the North better than anyone? She thinks back to the girl standing on the battlements with him just after she had won their home back. She had been so sure that what would follow would be an equal partnership, the way he had insisted her take the title of Lady of Winterfell and asked nothing for himself had reassured her. Even when he had been named King (and she had bitten her lip hard enough to draw blood to stop from protesting that it should be her, the true born daughter of Eddard Stark, sitting on the throne), even then she had still believed that they would work together. They had, for the first few weeks. And then he rode south.

Slowly she makes her way to the desk by the window and runs her fingers along the wood.

 _No good can come of Northern Lords riding south._ She had heard it said so many times but she’d never entertained the idea that it could be this bad.

“Look Sansa, I know what you’re thinking-“

She spins quickly to look at him accusingly; standing there in his pompous cloak with his arrogant _I know what you’re thinking_ as if he knows the first thing about her, as if he’s taken the time to think of what she’d want. “Oh, do you now?”

“You think that I made the wrong decision…”

She raises her eyebrows. _Yes it was the wrong decision, and I would’ve told you that if you had bothered to ask me._

“But I was doing what I thought was right for my people,” he continues.

“They’re my people too, Jon Snow.”

His hands clench into fists by his side and he takes one stride toward her before stopping suddenly, thinking better of it. She finds herself pressed back against the desk, with heart racing and nails biting into her palms, anyway.

“You will not use my name against me,” he commands in a strained voice. “I never asked for any of this.”

 _And yet you have it all._ But she quickly shakes the thought from her head. This must be about the sins that he has committed and not the ugly jealousy that she has let creep into her heart.

“No,” she agrees, “you didn’t ask for it. It was given to you because you were deemed worthy of it. But instead of living up to that you betrayed the North and our family who died for it and our home, the home we only just won back.” _I won back_ , she corrects in her head. “You betrayed me.” She’s not proud of the look in his eyes when she says that. She knows that he hadn’t meant harm in what he’d done but the fact is that he had taken the little that they had managed to rebuild and thrown it away. “I trusted you to go south and represent the North and our interests and you betrayed that trust.”

“I did what I needed to do, Sansa. The dead won’t wait for me to assemble an army.”

“And that was the only reason, was it? You needed an army and she never would’ve agreed otherwise, not even after having seen the Others.”

He shifts uncomfortably.

_That’s what I thought - all the lingering stares and delicate touches. It’s Lyanna and Rhaegar all over again._

He goes to say something but clamps his mouth shut so quickly that it’s almost done before he had even opened it. Tension hangs thick in the air and the silence stretches uncomfortably.

She will not throw him a rope. She will not say the reason that they both know to be true. He will own up to this himself.

“She has a legitimate claim to the throne,” he offers instead of telling her that he forgot the North for a girl’s love. “More than Cersei anyway”

“And why do you care?” The North, the North, always the North. Before he’d gone south that had been it. He had lived once as a sworn brother of the Night’s Watch, a wildling traitor, a Lord Commander and he had protected the realm and he had cared for all people who lived in it. When he lived again he had lived as Jon Stark in all but name and he had cared for his family and his kingdom and his home, only his home. That was until he had gone and filled his head with Southern fancies. “What does it matter what games the southerners are playing –”

“Because she’s reasonable. I trusted she’d grant us the North once she had won the throne.”

“Well apparently Cersei seemed more than happy to cede it too.”

He tilts his head and narrows his eyes on hers.

“I sent Brienne to represent me; did you not think she might report back on what happened? You had our independence in your hands and let it slip through your fingers.”

“I had already bent the knee. And at the time that I did it I hadn’t known that was what would happen. I can’t see the future Sansa but I was thinking of the North. I was thinking ‘When we ask for Northern independence, who will be the most likely to grant it?’”

“Who said we would’ve been asking?”

“Gods, Sansa! What are you speaking of?” He shakes his head, incredulous. “We have half the men of either army and this is before we’ve lost any to the Night King, before whoever finally ends up on the throne has inherited the other’s army. You’re right! We wouldn’t be asking; we’d be on our knees begging.”

Maybe. Or maybe not. Gods know that wars have been won on worse odds and she would rather die fighting this battle than knowing that she had given up before it had even started. He is a fool if he believes he can keep throwing false reasons at her until one of them sticks. It’s insulting.

“So that’s the reason then – you gave the North to a Southern queen because you thought it was be easier to get it back from her than not giving it away in the first place?”

He sighs and looks to his feet.

_Just say it, she wants to tell him. You coward – just say it._

“Sansa,” he pleads, grey eyes soft.

_If you’re going to give away the last thing I have for love, at least admit to it._

With a tight-lipped smile she narrows her eyes on him. If the next words that fall from his mouth aren’t “I am a fool who would value a pretty girl to warm my bed over the honour and health of my home” she cannot be sure that she won’t commit regicide (except it’s not regicide anymore is it? No. Not now he’s given his kingdom away).

“What do you want me to say Sansa?”

“Have you fucked her yet?”

He doesn’t reply for a long time, just looks at her with steely eyes after the surprise fades that his sweet sister would use such vulgar language.

 _He forgets_ , she thinks, _I have experienced the most vulgar things this world has to offer and survived them all. Words hold nothing for me; they are merely empty threats that taste like confetti in my mouth._

“My relationship with the queen is no concern of yours,” he answers coldly.

She knew that would be the answer, just didn’t want to admit it. She smiles sweetly and even by candlelight Jon knows it doesn’t reach her eyes. “My apologies, your grace. You may take your leave now – I have nothing left to say.”

He runs a hand through his hair. “Sansa, I… I-“

“You love her,” she finishes for him.

He sighs and for a moment she can see the shadows behind his eyes and the exhaustion flooding his entire body. How is it that a boy of little more than twenty can look so haggard? “I… yeah, something like that,” he agrees dismissively. She wonders if he ever wishes he had died for the Night’s Watch like he had planned.

She tries to be delicate. As much as he has angered her he does not deserve more pain after everything he has done and all that has been done to him. They can argue more tomorrow; now, he is too weary and she’s bored of the circles they keep tracing in the conversation. “I know that she seems important to you at the mo-“

“ ‘seems important’?”

She rolls her eyes. “Well, you sold out the whole North for her; I would hope that she seemed important to you!” It’s a silly thing to say in the interests of not starting an argument but her anger’s still burning and hissing within her and she’s not ready to have him tell her that this girl is more important than the North.

She sees an anger rise within him and bitter words form on his tongue before they both dissolve almost instantly. In the end he tells her, “She makes me feel warm Sansa.” There’s a vulnerability to it, as if he’s admitting to her his greatest weakness. Maybe he is. “I can’t remember the last time I felt warm – truly warm to my core.”

They were supposed to be Starks of Winterfell with the ice-cold chill of winter in their blood. They had both spent an entire childhood in the cold and it was a friend, not something to be escaped. She thinks of his red-haired lover beyond the wall; kissed by fire, the wildings had said. Maybe it was her who had drilled this craving for warmth into his bones. Or maybe it had seeped deep into him as he had died in the cold at the edge of the world. She imagines him lying in the snow with deep wounds carved by the men he had called brothers and nothing but the chill of the wind to comfort him. And now the only thing to chase that chill away was dragon-fire.

“I understand,” she says and she means it – truly, she does. “But there are bigger games afoot and more important things at stake.”

He begins to protest.

“No Jon, you don’t get to object,” she chastises. “You could’ve had three armies – every soldier in Westeros – marching north to fight the Night King but instead Cersei sits safe in King’s Landing knowing that if we do come back she’ll have the only army not weary from battle and kingdoms untouched by war to help to feed them and arm them.” She’s not trying to scold him and she knows he won’t hear it but she wants him to understand what they could’ve had and the implications of the decision he made.

“So you would’ve expected me to lie, to make a promise I didn’t intend to keep?”

“You wouldn’t’ve had to if you hadn’t bent the knee when you didn’t need to.” She’s tired of his excuses, his need to have the last word. Why can’t he just admit that he made a mistake, distracted by a pretty girl, so they can move onto sorting this mess? “And you can stop pretending you’re so damn honourable when you sold us out, sold out the cause that our brother died for.”

This seems to get under his skin more than anything else. Standing up straight and pushing his shoulders back he declares, “I know honour,” with a voice that is even and measured through his gritted teeth. “The things I have done- the things I’ve had to do – because it was honourable, because it was the right thing to do, because it was what our father would’ve done.” His voice had risen louder and louder and by the end she’s breathing heavily, trying to stop the shouting from reminding her of memories she has tried so hard to push away. “Honour is the one thing I can claim.”

“But you’d climb into bed with our enemy.”

He scoffs. “As if you haven’t had our enemies between your legs before,” he growls before looking up at her with wide eyes, jaw dropped. He shouldn’t’ve said it, knew it was wrong before it sat on his tongue but he’s tired and wants an end to this fighting so he hadn’t cared enough to stop it slipping past his lips.

The room stands frozen as her face slowly falls and his insides begin to tie themselves into loops while he tries to find the words to make it better. There are none.

“Leave,” she commands. Her voice is quiet but there’s a cold venom laced through it that cuts him deeper than any knife could.

Slowly, he begins to shake his head. “I didn’t-“

“Get out.”

He takes a step forward, hand outstretched. “Sansa ple-“

“No. Stop. Go back to your dragon queen,” she snarls. “She’ll need something to keep her warm.” She turns to the window where snow is still falling, illuminated by the moon. “Winter is here dear brother, and dragons weren’t made to survive the cold.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Constructive criticism welcome. There are various unfinished chapters that I may or may not post.


	2. 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this when I'd calmed down a little (so we see the introduction of Arya as the rational side of my brain) but not that much (so Sansa's still p. miffed). If you liked the mis-characterisations and lack of understanding of the world in the last chapter then you'll love the outright contradictions to things explicitly stated in the show and Arya acting more like a mother to Sansa than a little sister (whilst also sounding about 50 years old) that this fun new chapter brings!

A knock rings out sharp and clear on the door. Sansa wonders if it could be Jon, come back to apologise, to say he’s broken off his pledge to the dragon queen and renounced his non-existent claim to the throne. She lets a mirthless chuckle escape and shakes her head. She had thought she was done with childish fantasies.

“It’s Arya,” a small voice declares from through the thick wood.

Sansa turns away from the door and runs a hand through her hair. She’s not sure she wants to talk to Arya now. She loves her sister but she needs time before she can listen to someone tell her that they should trust Jon.

“I heard shouting.” There’s a silence. “He… he shouldn’t’ve said that to you. But he’s doing a lot of stupid things, isn’t he?” A huff of breath follows and Sansa imagines how it curls like smoke in the cold air.

Confused, she walks to the door. When they had received the raven about Jon’s decision it had been Arya who had defended him. _“We don’t know everything yet; maybe there’s a reason – a good reason”_. She wonders if maybe she had misread the situation.

The _‘What do you want?’_ that had been sitting on Sansa’s lips seems too harsh when she sees Arya standing with apology written on her face so in the end she settles on “Since when do you choose my side over Jon’s?”

Arya detects the joking spirit of the question and laughs as she enters. “Since Jon started acting like a fool,” she answers.

It’s a fragile relationship that they’ve been nurturing since Arya’s return home. They’ve both changed and grown with the world around them and they understand that they must stick together now, more than ever. Still, old habits die hard and they don’t quite know how to forget the grudges they held against each other as children. Sometimes Sansa thinks that they should just shout at each other, air it all out, but she doesn’t want to disturb the delicate peace they’ve managed to build.  
Sansa leads Arya to the small wooden table and drags a chair out for her before taking a seat opposite her.

Arya draws her mouth into a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “Are you alright?”

“Yes, I’m fine.” It’s the right answer to the question. She’s always fine. She always is.

Arya nods and adjusts her position in her seat, only to move back again. She sighs, deeply, tiredly before she asks, “What are we going to do?”

Sansa looks away and grinds her teeth. What is there to do? When Jon clearly won’t change his mind for anything. How are they supposed to make anything right?

Nothing,” she concludes finally. “Let the Lords rip his limbs from his body and feed him to the wolves.”

Arya barks out a laugh and when Sansa looks across she settles with a smirk on her lips and eyebrows raised.

Sansa sighs. She’s acting like such a child and she can feel it happening but can’t bring herself to stop. But there’s Arya sitting there, making sure that she’ll feel ashamed and embarrassed every time that she does so she quickly tries to correct herself. “I know, I know. Sorry,” she tells her. “I’m just angry.”

“I couldn’t tell.” Arya remarks drily.

Sansa shakes her head. “It’s just you saw how unhappy the Lords were when he’d spent too long in the south. What do you think will happen when comes back to announce that he’s bent the knee?”

“Terrible things I’m sure.”

“And I’ve tried to tell him all of this but he doesn’t want to hear it. He’s the King! and we all know there’s nothing worse than a man with power who thinks he knows best.”

Arya can’t remember her sister being funny, not like that at least, so she’s surprised by the chuckle the comment draws from her. “Maybe that’s true,” Arya allows. She knows Sansa’s angry and she’s sure that her reasons for it are just as valid as Jon’s reasons for making his decision. Still, she’s struggling to understand how Sansa can’t see that their main job now is not to fight over the decision but to make stop the Lords from tearing him limb from limb, to make sure that, no matter what, Jon has an army that he can take north, one that will pose a real threat to the true enemy they face. “We just have to convince them it was the best option, that Jon thought it was the only way to beat the dead, thought it was what they would’ve wanted.”

Sansa face contorts into a disapproving frown. “How could anyone think the Lords would’ve wanted this!? Gods know they’re the most stubborn and prideful men I’ve ever encountered,” she argues.

Arya laughs to herself and wonders if Sansa will ever be able to take different opinions as anything other than a personal attack from which she must immediately defend herself, if she’ll ever be able to do anything other than quickly jump to justify her position.

Sansa continues, undeterred. “They’d rather die on the battlefield, fighting for their independence than be under the rule of a Targaryen. Of that I am more than certain.”

“I know that,” Arya insists, before Sansa wakes the entire castle, “Gods, Jon probably knows that but the point is that this is the decision he’s made and whatever reason that’s for, whether it’s because it genuinely is the best option or because he’s an idiot we need to support him, and find a way to get the Lords to do the same.”  
Sansa knows this to be true, as much as she didn’t want to hear it. “How are we supposed to know what to do Arya?” As it is the North will fall apart on her watch and when the war is lost the world will crumble along with it and she has no idea of how she’s supposed to solve this. They’ll take Jon’s side and defend this decision as best they can but what if that’s not enough?

 _How is it we’ve ended up in this position?_ she wonders. _When did everything go wrong?_

“Why is father not here?”

Arya’s features drop as her face rearranges itself into a display of a soft sort of sadness - an unreachable, almost distant sort of sadness. She lets her lower lip drop and breathes sharply as if preparing to say something but stays silent.

“Or mother? Robb even?” Sansa continues. “Why is this left to us?”

“The price of war is high and paid first in blood then once again in tears,” Arya recalls and Sansa tries to think of where she could’ve heard that before.

“How long ago was it that we were all here? Do you remember that day?” Sansa asks. _Robb was just fourteen and Rickon a toddler held in mother’s arms_ , she thinks. _That was the last time I saw either of them alive_. Her thoughts turn to the story of Rickon that Jon had brought back from the Battle of the Bastards and the body that had not made the journey (there had been too many broken corpses on the battlefield for his to be found) and the statues of her eldest and youngest brothers in the crypts beneath Winterfell with no bones buried deep beneath them. If she could go back, gods what she’d give to go back and just cherish those last few days instead of being annoyed at Rickon for getting under foot and ignoring Robb because of his jokes about her _beloved Prince Joffery_. She remembers them all lined up in the yard, exchanging hugs before they rode off. How different those exchanges would’ve been if she had known then what she knows now.

“Of course I remember leaving,” Arya says softly, smiling at the memory. “We rode south with father and Jon rode north.”

“You looked like you would cry saying goodbye to him.”

“I thought I’d never see him again – up at the wall. Little did I know…” she trails off but the _‘…that it was the ones staying at Winterfell I needed to worry about’_ is implied.

“Mother was not impressed,” Sansa says, pulling the conversation away from what they’ve lost. The pain is still too sharp for her. Maybe in five years it would only inspire a dull ache to walk through the place she called home, but now…

Arya laughs. “No she wasn’t was she? She never was when Jon was concerned.”

“No,” Sansa agrees, “Neither was I.”

There’s a long silence that hangs between them.

“You just wanted to be like her,” Arya comforts. “You just wanted to be a lady like in the songs.” Her voice becomes high-pitched and mocking and she bats her eyelashes.

“Oh,” she groans, “gods Arya, don’t.” She was a silly child and she knows that without any reminders.

“Wanted to marry a chivalrous prince with long flowing hair,” Arya continues anyway.  
“Arya!” Sansa protests but for some reason she can’t stop herself laughing.

“Who’d sweep you off your feet.”

Sansa stands and makes her was swiftly round the table. “Stop!” she cries.

“And you’d have thousands of beautiful children!”

“Shut up Arya!” she giggles as she clamps a hand over her sister’s mouth.

Arya slips out of the hold easily and they both quickly descend into giggles.

They stop, panting a little and staring at each other.

“How come we never had this as children?” Sansa sighs. They had always been at each other’s throats, no matter the topic they’d disagree. An interaction like that would’ve always ended in a fight and they would’ve both had stern lectures from their father about family and Sansa wouldn’t be allowed to have lemon cakes at supper. Why had they not learned to jest and tease instead of throwing insults like daggers? “We missed out on so much. And now…”

“We’re different.”

“Aye, yes we are,” she agrees, an air of melancholy seeping into the room. She moves to the window in an attempt to get away from it but it has flooded every corner of the space. “Jon’s different too.”

Arya nods. “Yes, I suppose he would be. It’s weird to come back and know there are years and years of him that I’ve missed; I always felt I knew him so well when we were younger.”

“We never got on then. But before he went south, I thought I might know him, or at least some of him. The Jon who rode south would never have bent the knee. He never would’ve forgotten the North, never would’ve disgraced Robb’s memory like that.”

Arya laughs. “Are we talking about the same Robb?”

Sansa turns, eyebrows knitted together. _The King in the North_ , she thinks, _the first for nearly three centuries. The Robb who fought for the North and for its independence. The Robb who died for it._

“The one who married a woman they called a foreign whore and lost half an army because of it. Disgraced? Robb would’ve done the same.”

It’s a silly notion and it makes her laugh. She catches herself, surprised that his memory can bring anything but pain.

“Men,” Arya offers with a roll of her eyes.

Sansa nods politely. Sometimes she thinks that Arya has gotten over the loss of their family a little too quickly. To think of Robb and roll her eyes, to make light of the situation – it unnerves her a little.

Arya has shared precious little about the time she spent away from home. Sansa had gotten a brief overview of her movements (travelling north with the Night’s Watch, being captured and taken to Harrenhall where she had played the role of servant, a daring escape leaving her with a small pack of friends who were then captured again by the Brotherhood without Banners, running from them and into the Hound who had promised to take her home to her family, leaving him to die from wounds inflicted by Brienne and taking a ship to Braavos with hopes of becoming a faceless man – it was quite the adventure) and she knows that it must’ve been hard to hold on to who she was when she had to pretend so often to be someone else. But there’s so much that Sansa still can’t understand. How can it be that Arya is so ready to move on? Her sister has become a different person and she wishes she had been there to see her grow because it’s difficult to adjust her view of her little sister from a sweet and curious (if slightly too mischievous for her own good) girl to an assassin with a list of people she’s going to kill that Sansa’s far too afraid to ask about and a past that’s so full of darkness Sansa can’t believe that the weight doesn’t drag Arya down.

“What are you thinking?” Arya asks.

“Oh nothing, nothing.,” Sansa dismisses her.

Arya shakes her head. “I could see it, Sansa – I thought we weren’t keeping secrets.”

No, no she’s right; they’re not. But sometimes it’s easier to ignore these worries and pretend that Arya is the same girl she always knew then come to terms with what she might have become. She comes back to take her seat at the table once more and makes sure she’s looking at Arya when she asks, “Do you miss Robb?”

“With all of my heart.” Arya answers and from the look in her eyes Sansa can see the sorrow she speaks with. But somehow it’s a sorrow that hadn’t stopped her joking, hadn’t crushed her to recognise and for a second Sansa is almost jealous.

“How can you speak of him like that? How can you think of him without wanting to cry?”

Arya sighs, a long and heavy one, and then looking Sansa straight in the eye states, “Crying won’t get me anywhere. Crying won’t bring justice to those who wronged us.”

And it is no longer possible for Sansa to run. “You killed Walder Frey didn’t you?” she asks.

Arya’s reply comes without a moment of hesitation. “Yes.”

“How many people have you killed?”

“Do you really want the answer to that?”

No, no she doesn’t but as Arya says they’ve agreed not to keep secrets and maybe Sansa should accept Arya for who she is rather than the person Sansa wants her to be so she nods, slowly but confidently. “Yes.”

“So many that I’ve stopped keeping track.”

Sansa nods, breathes and tries to figure out if she can possibly come to understand those words. For a good few minutes they just sit and breathe and Sansa looks out of the window at the cruel world that landed them here and Arya wonders if maybe she's lost her sister forever now.

Finally, Sansa speaks up. “I used to pray that someone would kill Walder Frey. And Jeoffery. And Cersei and Jamie and all of the Lannisters and everyone who’d ever hurt us.” She’s not sure that she could’ve dragged the knife across their throats or plunged the spear into their hearts but she knows how it feels to want to. She thinks that at times she almost reached the edge, and although nothing actually pushed her over she can imagine being there, falling into the headspace that Arya was trapped in. “And then I stopped. I stopped praying and stopped believing that the Gods would do anything to save me. When I meet the Gods they will have a lot to answer to.”

She pauses and Arya’s about to say something when she starts up again. “I can understand what you’ve done, maybe even respect it. For so long things have happened to us and we’ve always been on the back foot, always had to claw our way back to catch up with everyone and I admire you deciding to change that.”

Arya is sure there must be a but coming. She waits though, and Sansa adds nothing. So Arya nods, and feels a sense of understanding from Sansa that she hasn’t had before. “I’m sorry I couldn’t do it earlier. I’m sorry I couldn’t been there to help you.”  
“You were fighting your own battles - ones that I doubt I would’ve made it out alive from. But I’m so glad that your here now.” Sansa reaches across the table to take Arya’s hand in her own.

Arya squeezes it reassuringly and smiles over at Sansa. “Me too.”

“Can I ask you one more thing?” Sansa says and Arya replies with a nod.

“Why is Cersei still alive?”

The question comes out of nowhere and takes Arya back a little. She draws her hand back from Sansa’s and sits back in her chair again. _Because I haven’t got round to her yet_ is the answer to this question but not to the one that Sansa wants answered - why is she still here when Cersei is out there? “I don’t know.” It’s probably the most accurate answer that she has. “I was heading south but then I heard that you and Jon were here… I don’t know…”

“It’s been a long time since we’ve been home.”

“Yes, yeah.” Home, the word is almost foreign to her at this point. Home. She looks over to her sister who’s smiling back at her with soft eyes. Home. She likes the sound of it.

They sit for a short time without worrying about a need to talk until Arya says, “I should be leaving now. It’s late and a warm bed is calling me.”

“Yes, of course.” Sansa smiles. She watches Arya stand and tuck her chair in beneath the old table. Her hand lingers on the back of it as she turns to the door. A few beats of nothing pass as the room sits still and Sansa tries to read in her face what the problem might be.

When Arya finally speaks the words are measured and soft, as if carefully thought through first. “It’s no place of mine to say you’re too harsh on Jon but he was doing what he thought was right. I know there are all these complications but in the end he’s seen the enemy we face; he know what it’ll take to beat them.” She shrugs.  
“It’s just,” Sansa exhales sharply, “I’ve been through so much to get here. We all have. And now all the Starks are back in Winterfell, finally, but it feels like he’s on a different side.”

Sansa watches Arya’s eyebrows draw together but she doesn’t argue. “I know,” she assures instead. “But we’ll solve it Sansa. I know we will.”

Sansa’s not so sure but for the time being she’ll take her sister’s hope and wield it like a weapon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These were the only two chapters that were largely written last year and I only have vague outlines and snippets of dialogue for the rest so any other chapters will probs be a while. Soz lads.


	3. 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok so here we have a lot of self-pity from Jon (but we've all be there haven't we?) and a return back to my classic "rehashing the same lines of dialogue about 20 times because I found it difficult to get my point across the first time." From now on there will be inconsistent lengths of time between chapters. This occurs a couple of days after chapter 2.

The sunlight streaming through the windows captures all of the dust floating in the air as it swirls around in clouds that remind Sansa of the snow that has not stopped falling for the past few months. She runs her hand along the crinkled pages of the book that sits in front of her and sends another flurry up into the air that disrupts the flow of everything to create its own streams and spirals that glide through the air of her father’s office. It’s entrancing and she spends a good few moments following the tracks traced by an individual piece before losing it in the chaos.

She sighs, and begins once more to look closely at the scratchings on the pages of the old Maester’s accounts of winters past, hoping this time something will jump out at her, some invaluable information about how to manage a castle at war in the middle of the longest winter she’s known. She’s had advice from lots of people, people who know a lot more about the winters than she does, and she knows that she doesn’t have to get through all of this on her own but it still doesn’t stop her from feeling this crushing weight on her shoulders that she should be the one to find the solutions to all of these problems that have presented themselves.

She must’ve read the same few lines three or four times but she stops a second and drags her hands down her face before returning to the beginning again, muttering the words under her breath this time. Perhaps if she hears them said her tired brain will finally be able to make some sense of them.

When the knock comes at the door she’s halfway through the passage but her head shoots up immediately and she calls out, “Enter!”

The heavy wooden door opens painfully slowly as she tries to figure out who it is pushing it. When, at last, the figure steps into the room she wonders if perhaps all of this sitting alone has sent her insane. “Jon,” she says more to assure herself that it _is_ him standing before her than as a way to address him. She hadn’t seen him in days and had been ready to not see him for many more. But despite the disorder that seems to surround him - dark eyes and unruly hair betraying his state of turmoil -  Sansa knows him and she quickly draws herself to her feet, attempting to move closer.

“No,” he tells her, waving a hand distractedly. When he sees the confusion written across her face as she stands motionless by the side of her desk, he says, “Please, sit,” as if that clears up anything.

Still, she retreats with slow, deliberate steps as he closes the door carefully and takes a seat in the chair across from her. There’s a deep sadness in the air that accompanies him and his face is contorted into a gloomy expression.

He looks tired - more so than he did the night he arrived and she supposes that it probably makes sense. She can’t think of where he slept or how he managed to catch much of it wherever it was. But beneath that there’s a tiredness that’s deeper and darker than the kind a good night’s sleep can fix. No, no this is the kind of tiredness that drills itself deep into your bones and threatens to pick away at you until you’re left hollow. It’s the kind of tiredness that ensures a good night’s sleep will be hard to find.

“How are you?” She asks tentatively, aware that she should wait until he’s ready to bring up anything too serious but also that they’ve a lot to talk about and not much time.

“I’m fine.” He tells her.

 _Liar_ , despite trying to be kind she can’t help but find herself thinking it. _You liar, I have never seen you look so lost_.

He looks up at her with eyes devoid of all life, now conveying a certain dullness that reminds Sansa of winter skies, endless and monotonous. She finds herself trying to find strands of purple in there, caught by the light. A soft violet behind the stormy grey that would provide some proof, some sort of concrete evidence of his heritage that she could've found had she only looked hard enough. But staring back at her is just Jon, the same man she has always known with grey eyes and thick dark hair and it seems impossible that he have any home but the North.

She wonders if it would be too much to ask how he’s really feeling and concludes that yes, it would. But there’s this silence that is stretching out between them now and it quickly becomes obvious that he won’t be the one to fill it. As each moment extends to last an eternity he pulls his eyes away she finds herself wondering if it had been minutes that she had held his gaze or just an instant.

In the end she tells him, “Arya’s been looking for you.” She supposes it's a truth - everyone’s been looking for him (although Arya surely would have found him if she had really wanted).

“Right,” he replies and Sansa watches her plan to get him to say where he’s been  crumple about as quickly as she had expected it to.

Sansa lets out a frustrated sigh. He must have something he wants to say to her or he wouldn’t have turned up but she fights back the urge to scream “What do you want?” across the table or to ask him why he thought he could just leave her - without saying when (or if) he’d be back - to welcome armies and organise a whole castle preparing for war. He’s delicate though. Gods know that’s obvious enough from the way he ran off.

If there’s a way to subtly address it she’s having trouble finding it in the thousand different scenarios that run through her mind.

“How’s Daenerys?” she asks. She’s seen her a lot over the past few days - it would be impossible not to with the position that they’re in at the minute. Still, they’ve only ever spoken about trivial things: the coming war and the arrival of support from the south, the restoration of the castle, the way the world seems to plunge deeper and deeper into winter every day. But she knows how hard this revelation must’ve hit her as well and she knows that they won’t see any sign of Daenerys falling apart until it finally happens. She’s far too guarded to have it any other way.

He seems to start at the mention of Daenerys’ name. With eyebrows now drawn together, he tells her that he doesn’t know in a small, gentle, voice.

She can’t hide her surprise when she hears this. She had assumed that Daenerys would’ve been the first person he would’ve sought out on returning to the castle. In seconds though she’s recovered and managed to school her face into a distant expression. She tries to infuse as much lightness, as much compassion, as possible into her voice as she says. “You need to talk to her.”

“I know.” He shakes his head, an aggressive flurry of motion. “Sansa can we not?”

Her lips push together into a thin line but eventually she agrees. He can’t avoid these things forever. There’s only so far you can run from the truth. “Well what do you want to talk about then?”

His eyes dart up from a second to catch hers before flicking away straight after. “When we arrived…” he starts and Sansa thinks of the joy and fear she had held in her heart. It seems like such a distant memory, the two of them riding in on their stallions and of the obvious sparks that had crackled between them. Was it really only days ago? “I never apologised for what I said that night.”

Sansa frowns. “You did,” she tells him, remembering how his face had dropped the moment he said it. _She_ had pushed him out of the room as he had tried to say sorry.

“Not properly,” is his quiet answer.

If she’s honest, Sansa’s head is too filled with the reason why he hasn’t spoken to her since that night and with that in her mind her anger all but disappears and she is ready to forgive him almost anything.

“I… it wasn’t right. I’m sorry.” It’s a pitiful sight – a King with drooped shoulders, staring up at her with big, sad eyes, begging for approval.

But she doesn’t understand how he can see himself in the wrong when she had thrown words at him that were just as scathing. “You were angry. We both said things we didn’t mean,” she assures him. “I forgive you Jon.”

He nods but still looks uneasy as he glances past her at the tall windows that flood the room with light. And there’s nothing else to say! How can she just casually ignore the biggest revelation? The whole world has changed in just an instant, shifting around them until it no longer makes any sense to her and she’s supposed to sit here and pretend nothing’s happened. She doesn’t understand how she can do that. It’d be like talking to a man in the gallows about the weather.

“Jon,” she begins tentatively. She’s hoping that his eyes will pull up to meet hers again so she can get some sort of grasp on what he’s thinking. They always seems to betray his feelings, as if everything in his brain is written out if you can only look deep enough. But though his gaze flits around the room it never seems to land anywhere near her. She wonders how they have ended up in this position. She thinks of how she might have reacted to the news as a child; she would’ve taken her cues from her mothers but she would’ve been glad regardless. It had been so drilled into her that Jon was less, that he was other she is sure she would’ve welcomed the proof. And yet it has only come now, in a time where she finally feels him to be close, would finally call him brother.

“This doesn’t change anything.” It’s important that he understands this. It may have implications for his position in the seven kingdoms, his relationship with the queen, his understanding of the past but for the two of them… “You’re still family. We still love you.” Arya should be here. She always understood Jon, she’d know exactly what to say, or even what not to say. They’d sit and, through a series of inconspicuous glances, have a conversation deeper and more intense than anything Sansa could ever share with him. But he needs to hear it from her too. Even if Arya’s already told him that he cannot escape the role of big brother so easily he should know that she believes it too.

“I’m not a Stark; I never was,” he tells her.

Is this what he’s spent the past two days thinking? “Jon-”

He doesn't let her continue. “I want to step down as king. I plan to pass the crown to you.”

Before he’s even finished she’s shaking her head. “You can’t Jon, not now.”

He finally meets her eyes and there’s a stern anger that fills his own. “It’s not your choice, Sansa.”

“Jon, you’re about to lead an army to war against the most dangerous enemy we will ever face. The Lords will want to know that it is their king they’re following into battle, that they fight alongside.” She tries to reason with him as earnestly as possible. There are things that she can’t understand things that she can’t be trusted to decide but she is sure that he cannot be allowed to make this decision. “I know nothing of war and I am no use as ruler, not at this time of need. Wait until the war is won” _or lost_ “and then we can deal with this.”

He doesn’t want to be King anymore. He wants to be a bastard boy with nothing, to be able to turn to Robb every time a decision needs making and to fade into the background unimportant and unremarkable. He wants to be able to do as he pleases but it’s too late for that now. It doesn’t matter what he wants anymore. He must put his people first. Reluctantly, he nods. “Okay, but when the war ends the North is yours.”

 _When the war ends the North is Daenerys’_ she thinks but it’s no time to bring it up now - he’ll remember sooner or later.

“Promise me Sansa.” There’s a harsh desperation in his eyes.

“Okay, I swear to you that, if you still wish it, when the war ends you can abdicate.” If he notices that she hasn’t promised what he asked of her, he doesn’t show it.

“And they need to know my parentage.”

She wants to tell him no, that it’ll cause unnecessary complications; they don’t need that, not now. But she can tell that if she makes him keep it to himself it’ll kill him. “Yes, whatever you need to do.” Daenerys had already met with the Lords. It had been the day that Jon had run off, mere hours after Sansa had welcomed the Dragon Queen into her home and she had stood before them in the meeting that Jon had called pretending that he had important business to attend to elsewhere. It had gone better than she'd expected. Sure, there had been dissenting voices - muttered criticisms and insults whispered far too loudly to be intended as private - but they had all left without starting a fight, had promised to think it over and Sansa knew that they’d come back realising that Daenerys really was their only hope. And if they could accept her they could accept Jon the Targaryen, still a child of the North, still raised amongst snow and ice. "Daenerys has already told them that the North is pledged to her."

She sees him wince a little again at on hearing Daenerys' name and she tries to ignore it but he lets out a dark chuckle. "Of course she has.” He shakes his head with an amused smirk playing on his lips. “Didn’t want anyone taking it from her now she’s realised it was never mine to give."

It's a ridiculous idea. Sansa doesn’t know enough about Daenerys to judge her motivations -  and isn’t sure she’d defend her even if she did - but it seems wrong of Jon to say something like that. “Talk to Daenerys,” she commands softly.

He runs a hand through his dark hair and pushes air whistling through his teeth. “Sansa I don’t want to talk about her!”

Perhaps she should drop it but it’s sparked something in her. “You can’t ignore it Jon. The future is immense and the two of you are both crucial in shaping it.”

“No, no,” he declares shaking his head.

“So you would just forget all that has happened?” She had only seen them together a handful of times but she’s finding it difficult to comprehend how he can decide that a love that had seemed so pure could be so wrong.

“With any luck, yes.”

“You can’t Jon. It happened and it’s important for you both.”

“It’s disgusting Sansa!” He doesn’t understand - she knew, Gods know she knew before he did that this was wrong and now she’s sitting before him calling it important, pretending that it isn’t a vile sin that he will have to spend his life trying to erase.

There’s an erratic look that glistens in his eyes as they plead with her for something, forgiveness maybe. The more she thinks about it, the more she is struck with the idea that he looks to be praying, in repentance for a sin he didn’t realise he was committing, and she’s the heart tree in front of which he sits. But she’s no god and in no position to judge him.

“I have tried so hard to live my life with honour, to make my father – or the man I called my father – proud. And this is where that has gotten me,” he cries.

She shakes her head. “You didn’t know.”

“And what difference does that make?”

“It makes all the difference Jon. You know now; you can do what’s right.”

His gaze drops from her to his hands in his lap again and he mumbles out an agreement.

 _Oh_ _Jon_ , she thinks, _I’m sorry_. For all his Northern honour he could not be saved from this, could not be shielded from the dangers of love.

“You're right, I'm sorry.” He concludes and standing from his chair he adds “I’ll talk to her.”

She can tell that she won't get anything else from him now, there's a new wave of exhaustion that has washed over him and she won't get him back from. She stands to see him out of the door. “Can I do anything?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

In that moment she is convinced that she has never felt so helpless, not in King’s Landing, not in Ramsey’s clutches. Never had she felt so weak and powerless as when she realised that she could do nothing to alleviate his suffering. With teary eyes and a heavy heart she pulls him into a hug. “My dear brother,” she whispers.

He does not waste a moment in correcting her. “Cousin,” he tells her in a cold, hard voice.

“No,” she declares, pulling away from him to hold him at arm’s length. “No, I don’t care who your parents were; you will always be a brother to me. Do you understand?” They had ripped two brothers from her already and she would not stand by and let them take a third.

“Aye,” he nods but his eyes are far away and she’s sure he doesn’t mean it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know what I'm doing. Constructive criticism appreciated.


	4. 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow I forgot how difficult it is to find time to write at uni. I don't really know anything about Lyanna or about Daenerys' childhood so it's very likely there are a shed load of inaccuracies in here but gotta think of the narrative ladz.

The sound of soft footsteps approaching echoes through the cavernous chamber and Jon’s gaze is pulled up to chase the source of the sound. From the bottom of the staircase Daenerys emerges. In spite of the thick, dark cloak wrapped around her shoulders, fighting hard against the chill in the northern air, a shiver runs through her as she takes the final step into the crypt.

Arya had said he'd be down here. It had apparently been amongst his favourite places to hide from his siblings as a child (when Catelyn had shooed him away or existing in their pity had gotten too much) and she had been sure that after all they'd learned it would be the place he’d choose to go.

She pulls down the hood that had cast dark shadows across her face and finds Jon's eyes in the low light. She could once read so much in those stormy eyes but now there is far too much emotion locked away for her to pick anything helpful from them. There is a moment of confusion and so much more hidden deep behind it. It’s a strange concoction laced with strands of loss and fear, of pride and despair. She wonders if he ever wanted to see her again. “Sansa told me you were back,” she offers as a vague explanation.

He finally breaks the eye contact and turns away from her, looking up at the statue before him, of a girl too young to be in a place like this. "I was going to come find you." There’s an abrasive hostility to his voice.

"I know." It hadn't been meant as a criticism, of course not. She wishes she could let him know that she comes as a friend but she doesn’t think any words could properly convey her sympathy. She wants to go to him, place a hand on his shoulder and let him feel how sorry she is in a way that she knows words could not convey. But maybe that’s dangerous now. She doesn't know. She doesn’t know anything anymore. She looks at him with a soft sadness to her gaze and her lips drawn tightly together in an almost-frown. "It's just I’m impa-"

“I don’t know what to say to you.” He interrupts in clipped tones that echo neatly through the air.

She takes a few more steps toward him, so that even in the candlelight she can make out the creases in his face. "That's okay.” she says with a smile that feels too forced, never mind how it looks. “Can I talk?"

He closes his eyes and exhales steadily, trying to figure out if there's anything she could want to say to him that he could want to hear.

She watches him intently, all too aware of his apathy. "Or I can just go" she offers when too many seconds have passed by, already turning as if to leave.

"No, stay" he calls out. "I'm sorry, it's just, I've got a lot of things going on in my head at the minute." He shakes his head and sighs. “I feel like the world is moving twice as fast as me and I’m just constantly struggling to keep up.”

Daenerys has a suspicion that they're all feeling like that a little. Every time she's spoken to anyone over the past couple of days there's been a sense of loss, as if no one can really get a grasp on what's going on. And she's sure that his emotions are amplified to a scale that she can't even begin to imagine.

“What did you want to say?” he asks.

Oh, yes. What did she want to say? She'd thought about it a million times over in the past few days - what she'd say to him when he finally came back - but now that he's here she can't figure out how to jump into it. There seems no right way to start without it sounding rehearsed, too impersonal. "I…” she begins only to find the words getting stuck in her throat before she's even had a chance to decide on them. She takes a shaky breath and decides not to worry about how she sounds or what he might think. There are things that need saying, regardless of their effect. “I have had only one goal in life - Viserys made sure of that. So many of my earliest memories are of him and the stories he'd tell about this land - our land - a land that we would reclaim one day, when the time was right.” It was all that had kept her going at some point, when everything had gotten awful and scary the thing that made her strong had been this goal, the thought of this place.

She can remember the sparks behind his eyes when he'd tell her of the riches their family had once enjoyed. There had been tales of green rolling fields and snow-covered hills and castles overlooking glistening seas, lands far and wide that had belonged to them for centuries and would once again some day. She had loved those stories and had created a vivid image of Westeros in her mind, a dynamic and vivacious image that burst with light and joy. Still, no matter how much she had enjoyed hearing of Westeros it had been the stories of the food Viserys had once gorged on that enticed her the most - banquets that it would taken hours to eat, never mind prepare, and luxuries from all over the land. It used to make her sick with hunger just thinking about it but after years of scraps and leavings no thought of glory or riches could have compared to that of a full stomach. It was Viserys who had cared for glory. “He told me that people would welcome us with open arms and wave banners in the streets and look on us like heroes."

She sees Jon scoff a little at the absurdity of it and she laughs herself. "I know, I know it sounds ridiculous but when you're that young…” Viserys could've told her anything. “Anyway it doesn’t matter; the point is that he was right about one thing at least. The iron throne belonged to him, and when he died it passed to me. But now it’s yours."

He shifts, turning his head slightly to look at her from the corner of his eyes and she thinks that maybe this has caught his attention.

"It is my duty to help you take it and I would be happy to-"

He laughs, a brash and raucous sound that easily fills the chamber, and the walls throw it back at her again and again. "Why the fuck would I want it?" He asks, incredulous, a wide grin setting on his face, something manic and erratic. "Gods daenerys why would I care?"

She draws back a little, thrown by his anger that’s appeared from nowhere. She wonders how she has managed to misread the situation quite so spectacularly. What has changed that allowed her to mistake the anger in his features for intrigue? She had thought she’d known him. She is only now seeing how naive she had been.

She has spent a lifetime learning to defuse the tension of these moments before they run away with themselves and boil over. Everything she says is soft and calm and gentle and measured; each word is put carefully in it’s place and there is such a sense of kindness to each one. “Okay! Okay that’s fine. I’m not… I don’t know…” she sighs and tries to pull together the right words from somewhere in the depths of her mind. “I’m just trying to understand what’s going on. I don’t want to take anything away from you but also I don’t want to make you feel that you have to do anything you don’t want to.”

"You can't take anything away from me Daenerys, nothing's rightfully mine."

"You want to continue to pretend you're a bastard then?"

"I am a bastard.” He insists, glancing back once again to the statue of his mother.  Rhaegar was married to Elia.”

"He was, until he married your mother."

He shakes his head. It’s just not that simple. You can’t just run off into the woods and decide that marriage doesn’t mean anything anymore - that you can end it with a word. There’s tradition and duty and respect. Didn’t Elia deserve better? And her children? If he had married Lyanna then he’d done it at a cost that no man should choose to pay. “Yeah what a gentleman - made his own children bastards so he could run off with his latest fling.”

“It wasn’t just a fling; he loved her,” Daenerys protests. “And Lyanna loved him too. She went willingly.”

“She was a child Daenerys, she didn’t know what she wanted.”

If the situation were different she'd argue him on that. She was younger than Lyanna when she'd decided to carve her own fate. It's a common weakness of men to dismiss women's actions purely on the account of them being female. This is not the time nor the place though. Let him paint his mother innocent. Let him paint her brother a monster. If that's what will help him.

And it does - imagining he knows his mother is comforting. There are so many more things he wants to learn of her but he’s all too aware of the fact that almost all of those who really knew her are no longer alive. He glances over at the statue of the man he had called his father and wonders if the image of his mother is even accurate.

Jon brings his hand up, fingertips brushing across the stone hand before him. It's cold to his touch, as he had expected and yet it still surprises him a little. He wonders if, in a different world, she holds his hand as she takes his first steps with him, as she sings him to sleep, or as she stands before him with tears in her her eyes and makes him promise he’ll return from some dangerous journey to a far off land. But in this one this is all he has of her: a cold, sad statue and a handful of stories.

“They always said Arya looked  like her.” He's now had the time to wonder if that's why they had always been so close, if somehow he had known. “The round face and small frame, dark hair and deep curious eyes.” He's also had time to decide that would be ridiculous. There’s no way he could’ve known about Lyanna’s secret. Arya’s resemblance had always been something insignificant and unimportant that Ned would comment on with sadness brimming in his eyes.

Daenerys supposes she can see it a little, tries to imagine the statue with Arya’s colouring and maybe, if she wasn't looking too closely, she could mix them up.

“She had Arya’s spirit as well,” Jon tells her and this she hadn't known. Viserys had told her of Rhaegar, of the tourney and his queen of love and beauty, but that’s all she’d ever heard of her. She  had thought of her as captivating and enchanting but she never would've imagined her to be like Arya - with a sword in her hand and dirtied tunic. No, she had seen a girl in fine silks with intricately braided hair, the very picture of propriety.

“They said I looked like Arya sometimes.” Jon’s words cut through the silence. He looks up at the statue again, contemplative, this time trying to morph Lyanna’s face to look like his own, she’s sure. “Sansa and Robb definitely did,” he assures her and there’s a pause where she’s sure she’s supposed to find something to say. He starts speaking again though before she has the chance to find any words. “No one ever likened me to her though; didn't want to disgrace her memory by associating her with something as shameful as me, I guess.” He laughs a harsh bitter laugh and resentment flows from him like blood from a wound. He turns quickly to face her. “What would she think of me, do you think?”

“She'd have nothing but pride I'm sure.”

It seems such an odd answer to him. “I have lived... a lie.”

“What do you mean? You have lived as yourself.”

He shakes his head. How can he have lived as himself when he doesn’t know who he is. No, his whole life he has lived as someone else - Jon Snow, bastard son of Eddard Stark. Jon Snow had been honourable and strong. He had tried to make his father proud. He had always tried to be patient and understanding, kind to those around him and willing to do what was needed him. He had gone to the wall to follow a long line of Stark men who had done their duty protecting the kingdoms and he had left only to save the Stark’s ancestral home and to help his sister. He had prayed to the old gods, insisted on taking his vows before the heart tree, trusted them to keep him safe. But Jon Snow didn't exist, not anymore and the gods were nothing but shadows on the walls.

And Aegon Targaryen, the man he was, the man he was learning how to be, what of him? To what values did he hold himself? What did he believe in? He could not strive to be like his father who had broken the world apart just to fulfil his own selfish desires.

"My whole life is a lie,” he insists as he realises he has no idea what he is. Oh, what he’d give to just be Jon Snow again. He laughs. “I had always wanted escape the name Snow but Gods I'd take it back in a heartbeat."

That hurts her more than it should - that he should choose to be nothing over a Targaryen. Is she really so bad? Is the thought of Targaryen blood running his veins really so disgusting to him that he would choose insignificance and shame. How could he bear to touch her? How did he ever bring his lips to hers? Had he not felt the blood beneath her skin - vile, dirty blood. The blood of killers and of vagabonds and of thieves. Maybe this is why she can no longer read him so easily. Perhaps it is only now that he has realised the true horrors that lie in her family name.

"What about us?" She finds the courage to ask him.

“What about us?” he shoots back without a moment’s hesitation and Daenerys has to school her face so as not to show her heart, lying in tiny fractured pieces, behind her eyes. She has survived much worse than this though and is far too strong to let this be something that truly hurts her.

With a deep, shaky breath and a light, pleasant smile that does not reach anywhere near her eyes she says, “Gods, don’t be ridiculous,” with just enough of an edge that it doesn’t quite pass as humorous. Letting out a sigh, a soft, deflating one that seems to leave behind sadness instead of relief, she speaks again. “Everything’s changed and we can’t make it right by just ignoring it. You must see that.”

It takes a beat before he nods and reluctantly admits she’s right. “Yes of course,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

“I…” _I love you_ , she thinks but knows she won’t be able to find the courage to say. In the end she goes for the infinitely easier option. “I missed you, and I’d like to continue this, whatever it is between us. Do you?”

He runs a hand through his hair and pulls in a sharp intake of breath. “I don’t know, Daenerys,” he tells her, almost apologetically. He grimaces as he tries to find the words to explain. “You’ve lived a whole childhood expecting to marry Viserys but me...” To him it just seems wrong.

“I know, that’s why I’m asking what you want.”

“What I want!?” he cries. As if anyone cares about what he wants. As if it matters. He’s far too important to ever get what he wants. “I want you Dany. I want to be free of all this responsibility. I want to make it out alive from this war and I want peace. I want to bring children into a world where they don’t have to worry about what the next day will bring. I want a home. I want a family... I want you.”

There’s a fluttering in her chest when she hears that and she allows herself to think of ways in which this could still work out. “You can have me.” He must know that already, she thinks as she looks up at him.

He does not return the sweet smile or the kindness in her eyes he turns away quickly, missing the way her face falls as she realises that any fantasies of their future must remain just that. “No, no I can’t,” he tells her. “Not now.”

“Why not?”

He’s too tired for this; he’s too tired. He doesn't have to explain himself - not now, not to her. Not when she knows him better after a few short weeks than anyone has done his entire life. No, she shouldn’t need an explanation. He sighs, his whole body deflating. “You know why, you know.”

“What?” she asks. “Honour? Pride?”

“No, no,” he shakes his head. It didn’t matter whether he’d been his father or not; he had been raised by Eddard Stark and he’d always made clear the line between right and wrong, good and bad. “It wouldn’t be right. You know that.”

She nods. There is nothing to be gained by arguing. “Ok Jon, if that’s what you want.”

He turns to look at her accusingly and lets a frustrated noise escape his lips. “Stop saying this is what I want!” he commands.

“Okay!” she throws back at him. “Fine! But you don’t get to wash your hands of this. If you end it now that’s on you, no hiding behind honour or morality or righteousness. This is your decision.” She’s trying to prevent her emotions from showing but there’s no hiding the way her words catch in her throat.

He recognises the pain in her voice and wonders how he has been so oblivious to his own cruelty. He had not meant to hurt her; he was just so tired of finding words to say to her. He turns to face her and sees the tears brimming in her eyes and he wonders if it would really be so wrong to just kiss her. They could forget everything he's said and all they've learned and he could push her hair from her face with careful movements and kiss her forehead until the creases disappeared. He allows himself to imagine the sensation of her silky hair tangled around his fingers and the drag of his thumb across the soft skin of her cheek. And she would smile, a spark in her eyes to replace the ocean of sadness, and nothing would matter. But he knows he could never run away from what he's learned, could never truly forget it. So he can't do anything like that, can't trust himself to go anywhere near her. "I'm sorry" he starts and he truly is. He wishes they could've had longer together. He wishes he could've told her how he felt. But now would be a bad time to say I love you. "I'm sorry but I can't do this anymore."

“That’s fine.” She nods, drawing her eyes away from his in hopes that he won’t catch the sorrow that she’s sure must fill them, even though she’d noticed the sadness etched deep into his own expression. “Yes, of course it's fine.”

She turns to leave and he doesn't want her to go. There are too many words left unsaid between them and he knows that if she walks away now he'll never say them.

“So what now?” he calls after her.

What does he even mean by that, she wonders. What now for them? For their families? The world? Perhaps she knows what he really means but she answers the easiest question. “We win this war, and then we win the next one.” she tells him without stopping her ascent out of the chamber and he doesn’t have the strength to call her back again so he turns back to the statue before him and lets himself continue imagining the world in which she’s still alive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This whole piece is kind of running away from me a little bit. It was supposed to deal with the relationships between Stark siblings but I keep finding moments that intrigue me and Daenerys and Jon's relationship is so important that it felt right to address how they would be affected. I swear they will get a happy ending at some point; they're just going to have to go through a lot of angst to get there.  
> As always, constructive criticism appreciated.


	5. 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is kind of a couple days or so after the last chapter.

It's the first day in months that the snow has let up and despite the dark clouds that still cover the sky and the chill in the air, it seems that all of winterfell have seen this as a sign that they should go outside. The yard is filled with the hustle and bustle of life - clothes being washed, supply wagons rolling in and people hurrying back and forth. There’s a couple of the stablehands finding time to wash down the horses between what seems to be an intense competition of who can cover the other in the most water possible. They must be absolutely freezing - it is winter after all and they’re soaked to the skin - but their youth, or maybe the excitement of the change in weather, has left them seemingly unaware of it.

Arya and Brienne are appreciating the fresh air in their lungs instead of hiding away training in the hall and so Podrick’s sat on a bench half watching them out of the corner of his eye. Brienne has said that it's really not necessary for him to be following her around anymore but honestly he's not sure what else he'd do. For so long he’s done what he’s told but now everyone’s far too busy to stop and set him a task so he’d find himself at a loss. And anyway, he made a promise and he's not in the business of breaking them. 

It's midday and the sun is shimmering slightly through the clouds when Podrick notices something  coming towards him in the corner of his vision. Looking up he’s greeted with the face of the Lady of Winterfell dressed in dark black furs, red hair tumbling over her shoulders. It’s remarkable quite how much she has changed since he had first met her in King’s Landing without really changing at all. The same high cheekbones and graceful air and her hair is still a bright auburn that stands out, stark against her fair skin and the dark clothes that have replaced the bright silks of the South. But there’s a lightness in her features that has been lost somewhere along the way with all of the pain and heartbreak, all of the tortures she has had to endure. Her expression is so often cold and distant where there had always been joy and hope. It is a cruel world that does that to a spirited child.

Podrick stands as soon as he realises it’s her. “My lady,” he manages to blurt out despite having to scramble to save the piece of fabric that fell from his hands in the rush to find his feet.

“Shhhh! No, please sit,” she tells him.

He slowly lowers himself back onto the bench, all the while looking at her with eyebrows knitted together in confusion. He had been surprised to see Sansa out in the yard at all. Everyone around the castle is aware that in some dusty office there’s a meeting going on that could determine the outcome of this war. 

“Should you not be with the council?” he asks.

She shakes her head but continues her stitching. “I know very little of war and less of the enemy we face. I’m of no help,” she assures. Perhaps if she says this often enough she’ll be able to convince herself that her absence from meetings has nothing to do with how uncomfortable she feels in the tension that hangs between Jon and Daenerys. She'd do anything not to have to sit through the extended silences and the pained expressions and today they were discussing military tactics which was most definitely not compulsory for her; she had not lied, so much as omitted some of the truth.

He nods and she, responding with a smile, lets a comfortable silence settle between them.

It’s the clash of metal against metal ringing out across the yard that pulls Sansa’s gaze back to Arya and Brienne. They seem to be moving on slow motion - it looks quite comical, their swords dragging through the air as if moving through water. When the swords hit again Sansa wonders how it is that they still make such a jarring sound when moving so slowly. In the retreat from the collision, Brienne calls for Arya to stop and begins adjusting her stance, pulling her arm down slightly and widening her stance. She’s talking throughout and Arya seems to be listening intently, still frozen almost perfectly still with sword raised. Brienne takes her position opposite Arya again and they start up again with their strange, sluggish movements.

It’s refreshing to see Arya like this. For a moment Sansa feels that even though the castle lies in ruins around her, and above her there's a dull, grey sky, and she’s standing next to a man she never would’ve met if not for all that has happened to her, somehow she can pretend that none of it did. It’s so easy to imagine that they’re back in a Winterfell from 5 years ago and Arya has convinced Jory Cassel to teach her how to fight. They'd stand side by side practising this move and that block until Arya begged him to let her duel and he’d give in and pretend to do his best trying to fight her off.

Sansa remembers one day when their mother had been visiting Riverrun (as Jory would only ever agree if the Lady of Winterfell was nowhere close) and the warmth of the sun high in the sky had meant that the girls had been taking their embroidery class outside. Arya had finished the task, a haphazard job but a complete one nonetheless and was in the middle of arguing with the teacher about whether it was necessary for her to start again with the aim of doing a better job.

When Jory had walked past you could almost see her eyes light up with the idea. “I  _ can’t  _ do anymore,” she had said, “I’ve got a sword fighting class now!”

He’d gone along with it, probably egged on by the look of offense and disgust on the teacher’s face and they’d wandered over to the other side of the yard. 

Sansa can remember huffing out a sigh and shaking her hair as they’d walked away and turning back to the others in hope that they wouldn’t see the embarrassment that her little sister had caused her. The class carried on and Sansa continued with her careful stitches and quiet, polite conversation and tried to forget about Arya. Still, there had been a moment when she’s turned her head at some sound perhaps and just for an instant found herself entranced by the movements before she caught herself, scowled and turned quickly back to her work.

But that’s how she’d always been when it came to Arya’s quirks. She had refused to engage with anything unconventional she did, making weak excuses whenever Arya had tugged on her sleeve and asked her to come and play with the boys and when Arya had called “Look Sansa! Look!” across the yard whilst engaged in a battle she had simple pretended not to hear and continued talking with her friends. She had hoped that the obvious distaste for the way Arya was acting might encourage her to stop but all that it really meant was that Arya stopped caring what she thought.

Of course she now realises how stupid she was. How she ever could’ve believed that girls learning to fight was wrong is a mystery. It would’ve been such a waste of Arya’s time to insist that she perfected her ne edlework when she has a clear talent for this beautiful skill, just as complex, just as intricate, just as beautiful as the patterns Sansa wove in dresses and handkerchiefs.

In fact, Sansa wishes she had been more like Arya. Needlework will be no use against the dead but if she knew how to wield a sword, it would mean she could go with Arya and Jon, could fight alongside them and protect them; instead she’ll have to stay in Winterfell, miles and miles away from her siblings once more. She already feels helpless.

“She’s good at fighting,” Sansa says, looking over at Arya. She's now copying Brienne, standing parallel with her and watching intently as she turns and moves her arm through the air slowly and decisively. 

Even though it was just a statement, something about the way it was posed makes Podrick think it was meant as a question. He looks up to see worry etched into her face.

“Yes,” he agrees quickly and confidently. “Brienne seems to think she’s doing very well.” In reality he doesn't know. Sure, Brienne has mentioned Arya a few times and always said that she’s a very good student, a fast learner, but he’d always gotten the impression that it was more of a jab at him than anything else. She looks to be doing a lot better than him, that’s for sure, but really that’s not saying much.

“Okay, yes, good.” Sansa nods, looking over at him briefly with a shallow smile before turning back to Arya. And then blurting out before she has time to think, “It’s just I worry about her.” She probably shouldn’t’ve said that, there’s no space for any fear anymore - believing they can win is half the battle now. She laughs in an attempt to hide the nervousness but it comes across as fake and hollow. 

She looks back at Podrick with his kind eyes and sympathetic smile that she recognises from years back when she had been younger and more naive and a bride for the first time and decides that after all this there is no real need to pretend to be strong for his sake. “She’s 15 and going off to war.” Maybe it’s not so young, but each time Sansa looks at her it’s a struggle not to see the girl she last saw in King’s Landing and it kills her to imagine that girl lost amidst the blood and sweat of battle. 

_ 15’s not so young,  _ Podrick thinks.  _ Robb Stark wore the title of king by the time he was 15. And Arya has surely seen more than most 15 year olds _ . But he knows that neither of those things will be comforting to her. “If there’s anything I know about her it’s that she’s a survivor. She’ll come back,” he assures.

As much as Sansa knows this is true and that if anyone makes it out alive from this, Arya will she can't quite work out if she believes him. Still, she scrambles for a different topic of conversation as they've dwelled on her worry too long now and there are people about and people are always listening. Fear is too dangerous, it can be so easily used against her. 

“What are you doing?” she inquires, nodding to the mass of red he has in his hands. He had been fiddling with it before as she had wandered over to him and it provides a passable, if somewhat clumsy, way out of their old conversation. 

He looks confused for a second, losing a beat with the haste of the switch in tone, but then quickly catches up. “Fixing this,” he tells her, holding up what she can now see is fabric but still can't quite make head or tail of. “It's my tunic, I ripped one of the seams.”

He begins sewing once again, slow, laboured stitches that still could not boast precision. Her forehead creases a little as her eyebrows pull together. It's almost painful to watch. “You can take it to the seamstresses you know?” 

“Well, I wouldn’t want to impose.”

She laughs, as light as the breeze and Podrick thinks it might be the most beautiful sound he’s ever head.

“It really wouldn’t be a problem,” she tells him. “It’s the least we can do after everything you have done for my family.”

It’s an odd thing for her to say. She perhaps hasn’t realised because she’s still smiling at him but as he sees it she owes his family nothing. It was a distant cousin who took her father’s head and he’s sure his entire family must’ve cheered when they heard the news of her brother’s death and he thinks of all the pain that she endured at the hands of the Lannisters that he hadn't even tried to stop. He had been there when the world broke her and he had done nothing.  _ The wolf in the lion’s den _ , he had always thought it her own fault. “Really, I’m alright,” he insists.

“They’d do a better job of it.”

His head snaps up to look at her. She has an eyebrow raised in a perfect arch but her eyes are kind and say that it was meant to be more teasing than cruel. He looks back down to the pile of cloth in his hands. “It’s not too bad…” he says but even as he trails off he knows she doesn’t believe it.

“The stitches are too big – they won’t hold it together.” She takes a seat beside him and there’s a creak of protest from the wooden bench before it settles. She holds out her hand. “Give it here.”

“No it’s fine.”

“Honestly, I need something mind numbing to do,” she tells him, already having grabbed the tunic with one hand. He lets her take it and she quickly begins taking out the stitches he's already made, needle held in her teeth. When the thread is finally free she holds the mass of red fabric up to the light before turning it inside out and arranging it neatly in her lap. There's a tear running from shoulder to elbow in the right hand sleeve that leaves the back of the tunic pulling away from the front. “It doesn't look too bad,” she tells him. With delicate fingers she twists the end of the thread and pushes it through the eye of the needle in one swift move. Podrick wonders how he managed to spend so many minutes trying to do the same thing. 

She gets to work quickly, pushing the needle through the fabric and out of the other side elegantly and precisely.

And so he finds himself watching Sansa, which is something he does more than he cares to admit but it's different when he's sitting right next to her. She smells a little like smoke, clearly having come from a room with a fire burning, and her lips press into a thin line as she focuses on weaving the needle in and out of the thick fabric. There's a faint colour in her pale cheeks from the cold of the winter air and the end of her delicate nose is beginning to go as well. She looks beautiful and he thinks maybe he could spend the rest of his life doing nothing more than sitting and looking at her. 

A blush creeps onto his cheeks involuntarily and he pulls his gaze quickly away, clearing his throat. 

She looks up at him with piercing blue eyes inquisitive. 

He hurries to find something to say. “How did you get so quick?” he asks, gesturing to the half finished seam restoration done in some witchcraft stitch that looks nothing like the simple line he had attempted. 

“A lot of practice” she smiles “You’ve no idea the number of seams I've stitched sitting right here.”

He nods. Of course he'd known that would be the answer. It's hard to imagine with the ruins around him; how could a little girl have grown up in these walls and learnt to sew in this yard. “What was it like growing up here?”

“Oh it was wonderful, bliss.”

“Really?” As a child adulthood had always frightened Podrick but now that he was older he wouldn't want to give up what he had now. 

Sansa could not feel more different though, and hurries to say, “Yes, god what I’d give to go back.” Everything she has now, that's for sure. 

Podrick’s not sure he liked it so much - it was just a lot of people telling him what to do and ignoring him otherwise. He shakes his head. “I can't think of a single benefit of going back.”

“We were so young. Didn’t have a clue about the world.” She smiles and stops seeing to look up at him. “I thought fae folk existed and treasure at the end of rainbows. I believed in the goodness of people and true love’s kiss.” He looks confused more than anything, a little skeptical and Sansa tries to think of other ways the world had warped in her young mind. “I thought all cats were female and all dogs male.”

Podrick bursts out laughing, because it's ridiculous of course but also because he's not entirely certain that he didn't think that. He's not sure if thinking that would make his life any better but here it is right now, just the thought of it making him laugh. 

“And that if I ate the seeds of an apple a tree would grow in my stomach. I was terrified - genuinely terrified that one day branches would come bursting from my mouth.”

“That's wonderful, just imagine” he comments. He can see it, deep orange leaves pushing their way past her lips, matching her auburn hair. The creativity, the gusto a child has, perhaps that is enviable. 

“I only found out it wasn't true when I stopped drinking water after I'd accidentally swallowed one. It was a day and a half before my mother noticed and asked me what on earth was going on.”

He can imagine Sansa’s stubborn refusal to drink and her mother’s confusion and disbelief when she revealed the reason. 

“But imagine being that naive again, that innocent.” Sansa shakes her head, the wistful smile of dreamers and romantics on her lips. “To see that much wonder in the world. Yes, yes I’d take it in a heartbeat.”

He nods, maybe she has something there. Surely there was a time when he had seen the world as a good place, filled with promise. Sometime before his father had died maybe? 

Out of nowhere a thought pops into his head. Of him as a young child gazing up at the stars. “I used to think you could reach the moon. If I had only found a ladder high enough I would've lived on the moon and chased glimpses of the sun and watched the world from afar, the tiny people living their tiny lives.”

“On your own?” She asks. 

“Yes”

“Would it not be lonely?”

It was never going to be any more lonely that where he was coming from, and that had been the main thing for him. “Perhaps,” he concedes, “but don't have to be alone to be lonely.”

Sansa wonders if maybe she had underestimated this quiet and perceptive boy.

 

~

 

Arya is so certain that she's winning right up to the moment that Brienne knocks the sword out of her hand and about 20 feet across the yard. She looks up, eyebrows knitted together in confusion and receives a shrug in response.

“You need to be faster” Brienne tells her and it takes all she has in her not to call the same words back in a mocking tone. 

Instead, she starts to make her way over to the pile of snow that had been half frozen over until the great hunk of metal had crashed through it.

“How am I supposed to be fast with this in my hand?” she asks. Plunging her hand into the snow she grips the hilt of the sword and drags it out, trying to ignore the tingling sensation that had all too quickly creeped into her fingertips. “It's like lugging around a bag of sand.”

“The weight is important,” Brienne tells her for what feels like the 50th time since she started training her with a broadsword. “It gives you more power. You have to learn to be quicker in other ways. Don't wait for your enemy to make a move before you block them.”

As if that isn't the most obvious thing Arya has ever heard. “What does that even mean?”

Brienne sighs. “You know exactly what it means, anticipate.”

"I do!" If there was one thing Arya had on even the most talented of swordsman it was her speed and her wit. Between the two even the best warrior would be left not knowing what hit him. The real problem is that she learnt to anticipate with a sword that flies through the air as fast as she does, learnt how long to wait and when to move and now it's all a mess because those timings don't apply anymore. It's like she's waltzing to music in two time.

“Well then, do it more,” is the only advice Brienne offers, with a wave of her hand. 

Sometimes Arya wonders why she even came to Brienne but she tosses the sword between her hands before letting it settle in her left. She tightens her hand around the hilt and tries to get used to the weight of it. Across from her Brienne paces, preparing herself.

“You ready?” She calls

In response Arya lunges and as Brienne dodges the dance begins.

It's mere minutes before it ends again and this time it is Arya who is flung to the ground, glad for the leathers she wears as she scrapes her arm across the gravel that lies beneath the soft snow.

Brienne's smirking above her, sword held to throat. “Maybe next time,” she teases, extending a hand.

Arya scowls, and pulls herself up to a sitting position herself. It's petty and she knows it but that was always one of her finest traits that came out, especially when she was losing. She can almost see the "suit yourself" running through Brienne's mind as she saunters off. Arya sighs. She needs to calm down, cool off so she flings herself backwards into the snow and gasps as the cold bites at her face. She lies there for a couple of seconds and stares at the vast, grey sky.

It stares back at her, bleak and uncaring the same way that it must be looking down on thousands of dead soldiers to the north and a cold and heartless queen sat high in her castle in the south. But how can the sky be expected to take an interest in the fate of the world when it sees so much? How many times must it have gazed down on war and bloodshed? Surely it all blurs into one. The sky will be there whoever wins the coming battles and will remain long after they are gone. It makes you wonder what the point is sometimes. It's all the same in the end, and the only constants are death and pain and the endless grey sky.

But that's not the thinking that wins wars and even if it makes no difference to the sky, the fate of all living beings rests on this. 

Drawing herself to her feet she brushes the snow off and, looking up, her eye catches on a flurry of movement, bright red against the drab background. Sansa sits on a bench, head thrown back in bright laughter that just reaches Arya over the din of the yard. Beside her, Podrick grins sheepishly, a blush high on his cheeks. Her first instinct is to look away, feeling that she's perhaps intruding on a moment but she can't really pull her eyes from it. It is a long time since she's seen her sister look carefree and she makes sure to hold it in her memory, saves it for when the darkness has well and truly descended.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok this is just indulgent, I know. But I really want Sansa to be happy and to have someone who loves her and since Margaery's gone the pool of people who are not related to her, about her age and not an absolute psychopath is kind of small lol. They were supposed to have all this #wittybanter but then I realised that I had to write it and I've never said anything funny in my life so please just insert your own chemistry, ta.


	6. 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok so I'm very done with having this still hanging over me now that the series is over, so have tried my best to finish everything. Not all of them are actually fully fleshed out and the final couple especially just contain the kind of arc of what I wanted to be going on but the ending of the show annoyed me so much that I just have no space in my heart left for this universe anymore.  
> This chapter happens a few weeks after the last. I had just kind of assumed that battle against the Night King to happen as more of a traditional war, with battles spread across months as opposed to one big last hurrah. But I guess I had also assumed that the writing this season would actually make sense but here we are...

There’s a thick and ever-growing layer of snow carpeting the ground of the godswood and it crunches slightly beneath Sansa’s feet, the chill in the air turning it to ice almost as quickly as it's settling. She huffs out a laugh and watches it curl through the air like smoke from a dragon’s mouth. This is truly the winter that her father spoke of: where everything is covered in an impenetrable film of snow and ice and nothing can escape the maddening descent into a grey-white haze.

As she draws closer to the heart tree she sees a mass of furs that hopefully hide the form of her brother and after taking a few steps she spots the spokes of a wheel.

“I thought I might find you here.”   
Bran looks up at her and then inclines his head in a sort of almost-nod that has become a common action for him. He doesn't say anything but Sansa feels scrutinised under his knowing gaze. 

She takes a seat next to him. The log is covered in an inch or so of snow and she tries to wipe some of it off before pulling her thick woollen cloak beneath her to line the seat. “Do you need more blankets bringing? I’ve noticed it’s-“   
“You’re worried,” he tells her in the distant voice that sounds so hollow that Sansa hurries to fill the air with something other than the lifeless tones. 

“Of course! Gods know what I’d do if you’d succumbed to a fever n-“   
“No, not about me.”

There’s a few beats of silence. How could she not be worried when Jon and Arya are out in the bleak and cold country, fighting an enemy no one knows if it’s even possible to beat.  “Aren’t you?”

Bran thinks, or seems to, and then responds in his usual dull, sluggish tones. “Worry is… personal. I can’t say that I am.”   
It scares her sometimes ( _ all the time, _ she doesn’t allow herself to think,  _ all the time _ ), this new person he is, the detachment from any emotion on this level. He’s part of something bigger now and she understands that but still, it seems like he’s had everything else ripped from him. Can he not be the three-eyed raven and still remember the days Sansa would cradle him in her arms, pretending he was hers. Can he not miss competing with Arya to see who the better archer was? Can he not be angry that Jon would always laugh at them before taking the bow for himself and hitting the bullseye every time? Can he not wish for their return? Can he not be worried that they won’t come back? She swallows thickly, and then once again but she knows that nothing will dislodge the lump in her throat. 

“What must happen will happen,” he tells her and it’s not at all what she wants to hear with two siblings so far from her. 

They had left winterfell more than a month back and by now had managed to push the others back half way to the wall; they were at Last Hearth now and would probably be there for a long time. The battles were frequent and seemed almost continuous, the sun barely setting on one before the next began. The soldiers were too tired, and morale was non-existent and Jon had said that this war would be short, over in perhaps a couple of months. They had win it soon or there would be no hope at all. 

The situation in Winterfell was almost as bad. Most keeps and towns had been evacuated months back and winterstown had tripled, quadrupled in size. People were all but living on top of each other and in the haste there had only been so much time to bring provisions - food and firewood were slowly but surely draining away and each time Sansa was forced to ration what was left even more stringently people became more and more restless. And that's not even thinking about the wounded who are still flooding in and now filled most of the rooms in Winterfell. It’s difficult to stay positive when most people are spending their days treating injuries they have nowhere near enough knowledge about and going back to freezing rooms and to not enough food.

So between the wounded and the fact that the armies are now far enough north that they’re needing to send supplies before they even know they need them, it’s a lot to manage and Sansa’s always liked a challenge but sometimes this one feels a little too much. She’s as good as on her own a lot of the time, as most of the people she could be asking are too busy to be solving her problems for her as well as fighting for their lives. It means a lot of reading and even more making decisions she doesn't feel she’s qualified to make. 

Nothing’s fallen apart yet thought, not as far as she knows.

Then again, she’s not heard from Arya for a few days and she would’ve expected to have heard some update by now. She’s not even had the usual letter containing a justification of Jon’s side in the ongoing argument they’re having about distribution of provisions yet (Sansa believing that they need to be as careful as they can now or they’ll find themselves with nothing later and Jon having to face the reality that men who are on the cusp of starvation cannot fight). She's found that arguments are far more exciting by raven. You send off a letter containing the perfect argument that you’ve had the time to construct and then a few days later, when you've calmed and forgotten about it you receive another rebuttal, in equally eloquent prose, and your blood boils once again. Far better than sloppy words in raised voices. She thinks maybe they’re just keeping this going as a source of entertainment now. But she’d sent the last letter days ago, and it seems strange not to have had some argument back.

_ They’re busy, _ she tells herself, _ that’s why you haven’t heard _ .

“Can you see them?” she asks. She has tried her best not to agonize over what’s happening but if she’s honest she spends every second wanting to ask him if they’re still alive. She’s managed to stop herself more times than she can count but today, today there’s something in the air and she doesn’t like it.

“Not right now,” he tells her, “but I have seen them.”   
“Are they winning?” she inquires immediately.

He winces and she feels like a child again, scolded my the maester for asking something silly. “It’s difficult to say. I’m no military tactician.”   
“But…” she offers, hoping that it was the word on his lips and that it was to be followed by something reassuring.

But there’s no luck and he only sighs. “Sansa, there are some things that should not be known or cannot be known. It is not the time.”

Her face drops. “Yes, yes of course.” She should've known that there would be no comfort to be found, not here at least. She turns the conversation to other topics, by which she means she talks at Bran while he looks into the distance with an air of sadness about him. There's enough to chatter on about. She thinks best when she's talking so she finds herself running through everything on her mind and how she thinks they'll solve all the problems that plague them.

“I miss you,” she wants to say, and if she thought it'd mean anything to him she would. But it's not her brother who has been brought to her from beyond the wall, just a man wearing his body. She has no right to but she sometimes finds herself annoyed that Arya and Jon are together and she’s left with her brother who isn’t her brother anymore. (She quickly pushes from her mind the realisation of how perfectly those words describe Jon as well.) It’s just that it gets lonely here, in this castle full of people. 

 

She’s sure that she had heard the padding of direwolves’ paws behind her and turns before she has time to remember that there are no direwolves left in Winterfell anymore, Ghost having followed Jon into battle when he had ridden off on a dragon the size of a small keep.

He had wanted to leave the creature behind to look after the Starks left here, as he had done when he had ridden south, but Sansa wouldn’t hear of it. He may ride into battle on a dragon with a cloak of black and red but he would have a wolf nipping at his heels. He would not forget where he had come from, who he had been.

“Tell me I’ll see him again.” There’s something making her sure that (provided that the war is not lost and the Night King is not the one to meet her at the gates) she’ll see her little sister again but her brother – or cousin, she doesn’t know anymore – well, seeing him again joins the list of things she can’t be sure about when it comes to him. She’d spent his final week at Winterfell avoiding discussing anything of any substance. That  seems a strange thing to say when they’d been talking about plans for a war that would surely determine the fate of the entire world, but she’d never once asked him how he was and meant it and she had only ever parroted the “I’m fine” back to him when he had enquired about her, out of politeness and habit more than any real interest in her. They hadn’t spoken about Daenerys at all, despite the fact that the entire castle had known what had happened. She wishes she had told him that she was sorry and she loved him and that she was still here for him, always instead of “look after Arya,” as he had left.

“Tell me he’ll come home, safe. And her as well – the queen,” she adds as an afterthought. He might never be the same if she was lost and Sansa wanted him home, not a ghost of him, she couldn't deal with any more ghosts wearing her siblings’ bodies.

“There are some things that can’t be known, Sansa,” he tells her again.

“Gods Bran!” she cries. “I wasn’t asking you to tell me the future! I didn’t want the truth, just something to make me feel better!”

He sighs and it’s more crushing than anything he could’ve said.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” It’s not his fault, she knows. “I’m just a mess.” She goes to stand up, wiping her eyes.

“No, no, sit,” he says and she’s not sure he has anything to say that she’ll want to hear but she sits, eyes still wet with tears.

“Do you remember when you were all children?” he asks and she wonders what relevance this has to anything. “I was too young and Rickon was maybe not even born yet but you four would run around the godswood together.”

She can see it in her mind’s eye and it’s beautiful. She had lived most of her childhood in summer so everything was bright green grasses, clear blue skies and rich red leaves on the heart tree. They’d run around with wooden swords and embroidered felt crowns and pretend to be royalty until someone called them in to meals or to lessons.

“You and Arya would always be princesses – before she was old enough to complain about wanting to be the hero.”

_ ‘No Arya!!!!!!’ _ she remembers her cries.  _ ‘You  _ have _ to be a princess! Girls can’t be knights!’ _

“Robb would be the prince who’d arrive on his noble stallion to save you from Jon – the evil monster or bandit or pirate, depending on the day.”

(Despite trying not to she thinks of the way Robb had tried to save them, and how it killed him. She thinks of the life she could be having if she’d never been stupid enough to care about the south and her mind spins circles as she finds a way to make everything her fault. She remembers her conversation with Arya about this and wishes that the day when she could think of her brother and feel anything other than a deep sadness would come just a little quicker.)

Still, despite it coming true in a way years later, its falsity had been Arya’s excuse –  _ Robb’s never going to be a prince and Jon’s not an evil murderer so it doesn’t even matter that I’m not a knight!  _ She had been right of course but as a child Sansa had cared so very much about propriety and listened too closely to her mother’s hissed comments about Jon. 

“He always wanted to be a prince but you’d never let him.”

She feels the guilt weigh heavy on her and a lump forms in her throat.  _ I’m sorry _ , she thinks,  _ I was a child, a silly child. _

“He wanted to be the one to save you, to protect you. He wanted you to see him as a brother, like you did Robb.”

“And my inadequacy as a sister is supposed to cheer me up?”

Bran continues as if she had not said anything. “He was so glad to see you when you arrived at Castle Black, and he was honoured to take back Winterfell with you and he would’ve killed Ramsay ten times over for what he did.”

She knows that, she does. She can remember standing outside the door of the room where she had been kept, fingers reaching for the handle but not quite able to close those final few centimetres. She stood like a painting, unmoving, and didn’t know if she could bring herself to do anything.

He had startled her when he came up behind her. Perhaps he was silent or maybe she just hadn’t been listening – either way she felt his presence before she heard his footfall. She had jumped, assuming that it must be Littlefinger – he had an unnerving way of finding her whenever she least wanted it. She had been ready to make an excuse and walk away, not wanting to confront her past whilst the man who forced her into it watched.

But when she had turned round it had not been cunning blue eyes but sombre grey ones that met hers. He looked confused, concerned maybe but Sansa had nothing to say. The excuse she had been forming stuck in the back of her throat and her brain stumbled over something to say. Tension hung heavy in the air between them and as Jon’s eyes darted from her to the door and then back again she got the feeling that he knew exactly what was happening.

“I can go,” he offered.

“No.” The response had been far too quick but she didn’t care. His presence was soothing. She took a deep breath. His arm was pressed against hers from shoulder to elbow and she pushed, leaning against him slightly. She took another shaky breath, and then another.

She was being so childish; what must he think of her? Nothing lay beyond that door but a room. He would not be there. He had died the horrible death that he deserved by her hand. He would not be there. In her thoughts it was said through gritted teeth.

She felt the seconds ticking by, agonisingly slowly.

The metal of the doorknob was cool against her fingertips and she couldn’t quite remember how she had come to be touching it but she curled her fingers around it and began to turn.

Jon took her other hand in his own and she looked back at him briefly.  His expression was sober and he gave her a slight nod. You can do this, it said.

When she finally pushed the door open it swung silently to reveal nothing but a room. It didn’t even look the same. Sunlight streamed in through the window, engulfing everything and giving it a happy air. It smelled like flowers thanks to the freshly cut roses on the dresser. There were clean sheets on the bed she was raped in. 

No matter how much it had changed it was still flooded with memories that not even the sickly scent of flowers could erase.

And suddenly everything was just too much, the stench of roses catching in the back of her throat and threatening to choke her and she was gasping, drowning in the something she used to be and could never escape.

And he had moved to stand between her and the room, hands flying to her cheeks and begging with a calm but firm voice, “Stay with me, Sansa; look at me.” 

Her eyes stayed firmly shut and her breath came out in ragged gulps.

“You’re safe. I promise you. Just breathe.”

Gradually she had managed to slow her breathing until it matches his, long, deep breaths of sharp winter air. 

“It’ll be okay,” he had told her.

Tentatively, she had opened her eyes to see the same deep grey eyes that she had known since childhood, familiar and comforting even when set in a face she didn’t yet know, and she had reminded herself that she was standing in her home - even if she had not been able to call it that for so long.

“He can’t hurt you. No one will ever hurt you, I promise.”

She nodded, willing herself to believe it enough for it to start to become true.

He wiped tears from her cheeks that she hadn’t realised were there and pressed their foreheads together and she didn’t feel safe but she felt the least alone she had since the day that her father had lost his head.

They were together. They’d protect each other.

 

“It’s so important to him that he’s protecting the realm and Winterfell and you. And that he brought you home safe, that he looked after you, like a brother should, and in return you gave him the love and acceptance he had always craved.”

It's an awful, awful thing to say and she thinks she knows what he really means;  _ This cause is something he believes is worth dying for; and if the worst does happen he'll die knowing that you two had reconciled.  _ She almost wishes there was something unresolved between them, still an apology needed from her and forgiveness from him, then maybe she'd be sure that he'd come back. 

She offers to wheel Bran back to Winterfell but he declines and says he'll return later.

When she returns to the castle she catches the first person she can and asks them to check on him and bring him back before sundown. She hates that he’ll get people to take him out into the cold but won't let them wait to take him back. She'd feel much better if he could stare at the sky from his bedroom window instead. It's only so long until someone forgets to check on him and he's left out in the freezing winter night and then what? Is she down to one brother (or has she maybe lost them all)?

Sansa cries that night - cries and cries and cries until she feels there is no emotion left in her body. 

There are only two explanations of what Bran had told her: either she will lose Jon before this war is over, and he had wanted her to know that the guilt and anguish she feels is understood, her actions forgiven, or he had genuinely believed that she might find it comforting, in which case Bran has become so far removed from the sensitive child that Sansa had once known that she's hardly sure he can be called her brother anymore. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah I really don't know how to write Bran. He's a bit of a non-character at times. I tried tho.


	7. 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter takes places a week or two after the last.

Sansa takes a deep breath as she pushes the heavy doors open, as if she’s getting ready to step into the sea instead of a temple. She can’t quite figure out what it was that drew her here, never having worshipped the new gods, but as she had hurried across the yard, eager to escape the snow, it had caught her eye and she had felt a strange pull.

It’s wonderful, with high ceilings and light stone pillars and a stained glass window to the south that the sun streams through, projecting intricate patterns on the floor.  But more importantly it has a warmth about it, the way that sacred places do. It’s a cherished feel, like you can tell it's special to someone even if not to you, and it's homely despite never having been home.

She can remember being young and learning that her father had built it for her mother so that she might feel slightly more welcome up here and hoping that some day she'd have a fair haired prince who'd love her just as much.

She runs her hand along the stone wall and it’s cool to the touch, the chill of winter outside seeping in through the walls.

“Hello,” a voice comes from further into the sept.

Jumping away from the wall where her hand had lingered Sansa lifts her head to find Daenerys emerging from around the side of a column.

“I'm sorry,” Sansa says, “if I was disturbing you.” It feels wrong to hear voices echoing through the room and she wonders how long it’s been since there have been people in this place. It was certainly no use to the Dothraki or unsullied and she can’t remember seeing any of the handful of knights the Kingslayer brought with him venture in. Was her mother the last one to seek comfort in these walls, to pray before this altar?

“No, you’re no trouble,” Daenerys says with a smile, gesturing for Sansa to continue.

Sansa nods and moves down to the altar where seven statues stand. As a child she had thought they were immense, towering over her like giants, but after seeing the Sept of Baelor they seem tiny, and she’s grown so much that they’re smaller than her now. She still remembers all that her maesters taught her when she was younger and she finds herself standing before the mother, standing tall and dignified. People pray to the mother for mercy, for peace, she remembers, but also for fertility and safety in childbirth. How strange it is that the world has thrown them into situations that call for both.

She thinks of her own mother again and wonders if, from some unknown, distant place, Catelyn can see her. She hopes not. She does not need her mother knowing the person she has become.

Hearing Daenerys move behind her she finally speaks. “It’s a long time since these have been prayed to,” she comments, still gazing up at their faces.

“I wasn’t praying.” Daenerys says defensively and even if Sansa’s past her wariness of Daenerys that had made every one of her actions seem wrong, the shortness of the response and the implication that it would be an insult to imply Daenerys worshipped the same gods her mother had is offensive to Sansa. She purses her lips to avoid saying anything. Now is not the time to be arguing.

“I don’t believe in the new gods,” Daenerys tells her as she makes her way over to stand by Sansa. As she casts her eyes across the statues Sansa can see her reminding herself of each one. Her gaze settles on the stranger. “They sure don’t believe in me.”

Sansa nods because from what she’s heard, it definitely seems to be true - Daenerys has had to face a lifetime of opposition and the gods, well the gods must really hate her because apart from three dragon eggs they have done nothing but throw problems at her.

So in the interest of promoting amity  she says, “I can’t say I hold any faith in gods, old or new, either.”

Daenerys smiles. “They wouldn’t deserve your faith, Sansa. Believe in yourself.”  
“And that works for you?”

“So far it has.”

And that must be true because she has razed cities and defeated armies this woman, this girl, and all the mistrust and unease that Sansa has in her heart is difficult to hold onto when Daenerys is so inspiring.

Arya had taken to her almost immediately. Perhaps not on the first night when tension had poisoned the air like a thick mist but the next morning when they had all come down to breakfast and Jon had refused to even look at Sansa, the words of the night before still swimming through both of their heads. Bran had not shown up, despite being invited (in hindsight probably because of the task that she knew lay ahead of him). With Jon and Sansa both silent Daenerys had taken the initiative to begin conversation. She had told stories of Essos and her travels and the dragons, which had once been no larger than puppies and now could burn villages to the ground. Arya had asked question throughout - how she had felt when she'd known she would die on her husband’s funeral pyre, and what the desert had been like and if she'd ever visited Braavos. Throughout it, Daenerys had shown a steely determination but a softness behind the edge as well and Sansa had seen a grudging respect develop in her little sister with every word Daenerys said.

As they left Arya had turned to Sansa and whispered, “I like her,” with a glint in her eyes.

Sansa had looked down at her with a knowing smile. “Of course you do.” There was something about Daenerys’ attitude that was distinctly Arya. Here was a woman who had rejected what the world had told her to be and had become a queen through her own work and determination, through kindness and strength. And then after a few short seconds she had added, jokingly, “It's the dragons isn't it?” thinking of the towering beasts who had arrived that morning with the rest of the armies. Arya had seemed enchanted by them.

“Ok it might be the dragons,” Arya had replied with a smirk.  
“How was Arya?” Sansa inquires.  
Daenerys chuckles, “As good as anyone can be when facing an impossible enemy at the ends of the world.” and then, after a moment's hesitation adds, “She's good. A born fighter.” Because that's what she knows Sansa needs to hear.

Sansa smiles. Never would she have expected to find that comforting but it really does make her happy to know that she stands a chance out there.

But when she looks at Daenerys she can see there's something troubling her.

“What is it?”

“Nothing,” Daenerys answers immediately and there's a tension that hangs in the air as Sansa worries what that could possibly mean. They’d tell her wouldn’t they? If her sister had died they would know that it was far crueler to wait than to let her know. She looks to the stranger, a hooded figure, almost human-like but just off enough to give a sense of unease.

Daenerys can see that she’s worried Sansa and when she looks to the stranger Daenerys feels it important that she make clear that Arya is still alive, as far as she knows. “It was probably just the exhaustion, and the killing.” It's a lot, to be picking up a sword every day, and maybe they’re fighting the dead but there’s a feeling that comes with killing that still doesn’t change, no matter what it is you’re killing or how necessary it is. Better men were doing worse. “She seems different. I can't claim to know your sister but I think the battlefield makes her uneasy in a way I never would’ve expected to.” She pauses for a second in hopes of finding the right words to express what is merely a sense that she has and a handful of strange interactions. “I don’t know. It’s hard to put into words.”

Yes, Sansa thinks, she surely must’ve read Arya wrong. Killing was a part of Arya now. Just as she’s about to say that Daenerys speaks up.

“She arrived in my room one night and said, ‘You can have Cersei,’ and then left without another word.”

It had been an unspoken source of conflict between the two ever since Daenerys had declared that she would make cersei pay for what she had done and Arya had been unable to stop herself from saying “not if I make her first” and Daenerys had glared and said, the pretenders to the throne is mine to kill. They'd never brought it up again but Sansa knew her sister and she would not give up that easily.

Still here they were and Arya had given up, or maybe less given up than moved on. It fills her with a joy that is hard to come by in these bleak day.

“If I'm being honest, I can't claim to know my sister either,” she warns “She's so different now from any version of her I’d known.” None of them had come back the same and though she had maybe managed to figure Jon out a little, Arya and Bran still remained largely a mystery. “I think she lost herself a little, to the faceless men. But I think she's trying to make her way back.”

She'd seen the uncaring, distant being that Arya could allow herself to become. She'd heard all about the depths of her loss and she wouldn't have been surprised if she had ended up like Bran, a mere spectator to the world’s events, unable to find any connection to it. But she'd also come home; instead of taking that road to Cersei she had chosen to find her siblings. Her little sister was still in there somewhere, and fighting to get out.

“Revenge was her way of coping with what had happened. But now she’s come home and she has family, she has new things to fight for.”

 _Yes_ , Daenerys thinks. If she had listened to vengeance alone she never would’ve entertained the idea of helping Jon with the Others, maybe she would’ve never bothered to get to know him. Her hand flies to her stomach. There’s not much of a bump there yet but this, this is something that her vengeance never could have got her.

“Are you ok?” Sansa asks, looking at her hand with concern written over her face.

“Yes,” Daenerys reassures. “Yeah I’m fine, just, just thinking.”

“Do you know the sex yet?” Sansa inquires.

She shakes her head. “No, I’m hoping for a little girl – a little Queen.”

Sansa nods. She's smiling but there’s something false in the way it doesn't quite reach her eyes. Ever since Daenerys had arrived back at Winterfell, on a freezing cold day, blizzard blowing around her, and hurriedly explained the situation to Sansa in hushed tones Sansa had seemed a little reluctant to engage with the idea of the child. She always seems to find herself met with this stony silence whenever she brings it up.

She goes to fill the silence and finds herself saying, “Jon wants a boy,” despite being sure that she had decided to move away from the topic of the child.

Sansa smiles again, that same hollow smile and tells her, “You’ll have to have another then.”

Now it's Daenerys’ turn to respond with a fake smile and wonder if Sansa had said that just to hurt her. “There is a throne to win first.”

Sansa nods. Of course, the Iron Throne comes first, before love and family, before happiness (or what could be). “Well, that's provided that the whole world doesn't descend into an icy oblivion.”

Daenerys smiles. “It won't. We will win this war.”

“How can you be so sure.”

“The iron throne is mine, I was born to take it,” Daenerys says with such confidence that Sansa can imagine her having practiced it over and over, finding the right stresses and intonations to make it more convincing.

For a woman who scoffs at religion she puts a lot of faith in destiny.

“And the North will fight with me?” She asks. She had made an agreement with Jon but everything had shifted now. She didn't know how much his word meant anymore, with him planning to leave Sansa in charge of the North, and it was her support that was now vital.

“You have kept your promise.” They would have surely lost this battle against the dead without her. She deserved for them to at least hold up their end of the bargain. “You have been promised that the northern armies will join your cause, I intend to honour that.”

They should not be fighting for her on the back of a promise kept but because she was their Queen, and she had asked them to. Before can say anything Sansa speaks again.

“But afterwards, what happens then?”

“Your men can return North, and I will name the starks wardens”

“The North no longer bows to the Iron Throne,” Sansa informs her, ice in her tone.

It always comes back to this. Every time Daenerys would try to extend an olive branch, to find a moment of connection, it meant nothing because in the end Sansa would never let this go. “The King in the North bent the knee did he not?”

She shakes her head. “And what about all it cost us to get here, the people who have fought and given their lives so that the North maybe free?”

She remembers that Sansa has lost two brothers to this war as well.

Is it worth all of the arguments? Could she give it to Sansa, be the Queen of the Six Kingdoms, as it had been all those years ago?

No, no she's lost her entire family, and she will take back what was stolen from them. She will honour their memory.

“I cannot give you the North,” she tells Sansa.

 _Then you’ll watch us take it_. Sansa bites back the words, knowing it would be foolish to line up yet another war for them to fight and she should really talk to Arya first, and to Jon, even if this baby does complicate everything.

Maybe there's no winning this one, she thinks. Maybe they will have to wait another three centuries again before there comes another chance to crown the King in the North.

The looks to the father. _If you_ are _out there, somewhere,_ she thinks, _and if justice truly does exist, you will allow us this - you will give us our freedom._

 

Sansa opens the doors and is immediately hit by a front of cold air that rushes in. The snow is falling thicker and faster than it had been when she’d entered and they both stand, staring out at the bleak scene before them. They both know they’ll have to leave at some point and that the short walk back to hall will be made no easier by waiting but still, they're not ready to brace it, not quite yet.

“It’s an awful time to marry” She says, looking out on a yard almost entirely obscured by the snow.

Daenerys turns to look at her, confusion etched into her features.  “Pardon”

Sansa nods outside to the snow that’s falling rapidly from the dark sky. “You know what they say, a winter wedding…”

 _A summer bride is kind and good and loved for all her life_ _  
_ _But the bride who weds in winter snows knows misery and strife._

It’s an old rhyme that she used to chant as a child, copied off the older girls who would chatter of marriage and boys in the yard. They’d sing it with smirks on their faces and a teasing tone, knowing that it was nothing more than a silly old wives’ tale. But Sansa had decided that she wanted her wedding in midsummer with wildflowers weaved through her hair and sun shining down on her.

When she looks over at Daenerys though she’s not laughing and her brows are still knitted together, clearly unamused. Maybe they never had that chant in Essos.

“It’s all superstition I guess, silly rhymes for children who no nothing of love and marriage.” Sansa scrambles to revise what was clearly the wrong thing to say. Of course they could marry at any time and it’d still be perfect. “Nothing to worry about, not at all.”  
Daenerys smiles, an attempt to calm Sansa who seems nervous chattering away at such a speed. “Sorry, whose wedding?”

This stops Sansa short. She remembers all of the awkward moments, pained looks and cold exchanges they shared before they left for battle but surely they’ll move past that. What about all the longing glances? What about the intensity of emotion that had so obviously hung between them? “Yours…” she clarifies although she had thought it was obvious. “Are you not-” She stops herself before she can make it any worse.  Clearly she’s misread this situation. She had thought that Jon would’ve proposed the second he’d heard. It was so clear that he still loved her, no matter what his name was, and she had made it no secret that she still wanted him. Surely the baby should've provided them with a perfect excuse.

Daenerys finally realises what Sansa’s talking about and she lets out a chuckle. Her and Jon’s wedding - the idea is strange and Jon had certainly not implied anything of the sort. No he’d shipped her off as far from her as possible the second he’d learned.

She'd waited to tell him. She had to know that it was for sure before she sprung it on him. But where she could ignore the aches and sickness and chalk the exhaustion up to the stresses of war, there was no getting past the way her belly was beginning to grow. Before long the entire army would know, without her having to tell them.  
She had not wanted to share it with anyone, as soon as someone else knew she would be forced to accept it, but had made herself talk to Missandei who had confirmed just what she'd feared.

That night when the sun had set she'd found Jon in his tent in the middle of a heated debate with a handful of northern lords. When she had entered the voices had fallen silent almost immediately and they had raised their heads to look at her.

She had looked straight at Jon and smiled calmly. "Can we talk?"  
He must've seen it in her eyes, the importance, because he had told everyone else to leave and then it had been just them, standing in the candlelight.

He wore a pained expression, the same one that he had worn every time he’d looked at her since they’d spoken in the crypts. His voice had been soft though as he'd asked, “What is it?”

There was no space for niceties or delicate delivery. "I'm pregnant,” she had told him.

And his face had shown pure horror. It was only for a second but there was no way she could miss the fear in his eyes, more intense and real than anything she’d seen in the past month of fighting death.

And then he'd left, stopping to say something but then thinking better of it as he exited the tent. She had wondered whether he wanted her to stay or if he would be surprised to find her there on his return. She took a seat and tried her best to contort his face in her memory to display some other emotion. Maybe his eyebrows had lifted and drawn together in surprise, and his eyes been pulled open with joy.  
He had come back only a few minutes later. Jorah entering the tent with him but waiting by the door. "Ser Jorah will take you home," he told her as she crossed the room toward her.

It would be impossible of course, she had thought to herself, as she didn't have a home; but she stood up anyway and made her way past him and just as she had brushed past him he had reached for her wrist and she had trailed her gaze up his arm to his face where there was still so much fear and disgust. Unable to look at him for more than just a moment, her gaze fell quickly to the floor.

She felt like a child being scolded and for a second she began to wonder if maybe he thought it wasn't his, or he'd forgotten that she thought this was so impossible or there were some other way that she’d made a mistake and this was all her fault.

"No one can know," he told her "Sam will help you, he’ll know what to do but you've got to keep it quiet, Dany.”

It had surprised her to hear a nickname, especially in the harsh tones of his anger but she had nodded, murmured an agreement and tried to move away.

Then out of nowhere he had said her name again and and let go of her wrist to lift her face to him, a featherlight touch under her chin, and he'd looked at her with something closer to the pained longing that had filled his eyes for weeks and for a second she thought he might kiss her. But then it was gone and he drew his hand back and walked past her to the table he’d been standing at when she’d first walked in. In silence and with tears brimming in her eyes, she continued out of the tent and to the horse that would take them on the three week ride to winterfell.

“No, there are no plans for a wedding,” she reveals.

Perhaps she is just not destined for happiness when it comes to love. There are far greater things ahead of her but it still hurts that she might have to watch him wed some other girl, give her children and find the happiness, the family he so wanted in her instead.

She looks to her right and wonders if it might be Sansa she’ll have to watch take her place. She’d sensed the tension between them from the second she’d entered the castle and Sansa’s a beautiful girl to be sure. More importantly she’s Lady of Winterfell, and that would make Jon the Lord.

She wonders if Sansa has realised it. “He might choose you yet.” she tries to say nonchalantly, as if she’s not eager to see how Sansa responds.

Sansa laughs, initially freely but as she sees Daenerys’ expression remain serious there’s an edge of nervousness to it. “Me, I’m his sister…”

“Cousin” she corrects. If she were just his half sister and he were still the son of Eddard Stark then she would’ve had no reason to believe he’d stray, even with the closeness that the two so evidently shared. But now he knew of his true father… “He would still call himself a Northerner, still think of Winterfell as his home. And yet he is a Targaryen and he can claim no connection to it. The best way to change that is through marriage.”

It takes Sansa a second to understand what’s being said. As far as she’s concerned, as long as she is in Winterfell it will be a home to all of her siblings. If they choose to travel elsewhere then of course she’d have to let them but they would always be welcome within these walls. Then again, she already knows that he would not consider himself her brother. Is it that ridiculous for him not to consider winterfell his home. She can’t imagine him moving south - in her mind he is and will always be a child of the cold barren north and she wants him to stay, obviously. But can she imagine marrying him, laying with him? She remembers the night he returned where she urged him to think of the North before his love and hopes that he will not heed her advice.

She pushes the thought from her mind. She’s Ned Stark’s daughter and she will do her duty but there’s no reason to worry about a problem that doesn’t even exist yet. He might not even make it back.

Sansa wonders how much Daenerys has thought about this, to be able to reel off such a list of reasons justifying her thoughts. If Sansa had been asked why Jon might want to marry her she would’ve found it hard to find even a single reason so she can’t believe that Daenerys thought those up just now. She can see, as she glances over at her, that Jon is something that weighs heavy on her mind and wonders how she hadn’t noticed it before, in the way she would deflect each time a conversation had turned to their future. Sansa had assumed she was uneasy to think of what could be if the war was won just in case it wasn’t but it’s clearly far more complex. She wants Jon, clearly, and if she can’t have him she wants to know who will.

It’s strange to think that she should be in the middle of shaping the fate of the world, trying to reclaim her birthright, and be thinking of Jon. Sansa is struck with the sudden realisation that beneath all of the titles and the ceremony, Daenerys is merely a girl, just like any other, and a girl in love at that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I remember thinking this was a little more harsh than Daenerys probably deserved when I first started writing it but after seeing series 8 I guess it could've been a lot worse. She was never my favourite character but she was so undeserving of the way they butchered her that I now have an unending love for her.  
> I know nothing about traditions surrounding weddings in Westeros but was kind of influenced by June Bride from Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. And idk I feel it's not that far-fetched.


	8. 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happens a month or so after Chapter 7.

The Godswood is all dressed up with paper chains and streamers hanging from the branches of the tall trees (having had it on good authority that it will not snow overnight) and lanterns lining the paths, decorated with vibrant flowers. Tomorrow the future rulers of the seven kingdoms will take their vows under the canopy of rust coloured leaves but now Sansa sits with her eldest brother.

She had known she would find him here, of all places in the castle. It's hard not to feel a sense of home in this sacred place, and he's seemed distant and worried over their past few days. 

“It's wonderful how constant this place stays,” Jon says. Winterfell has changed immensely since he was a boy and it will continue to do so, he's sure, under Sansa’s careful guidance over the coming years and that's wonderful in a way. It's important to grow and change and become more than you were but it's nice to have this tiny capsule to fuel his nostalgia. “We used to play under these same trees as children.”

“And they look exactly the same now,” Sansa agrees. 

Jon nods, a warm open smile on his face. “It's comforting.”

“I would come here a lot whilst you were gone. I lost faith in gods a long time ago but this war found me praying at every moment I could take.”

“And we made it back,” Jon remarks.

Jon had killed the Night King with a battle raging around them and then as the eye of the storm. It had been Arya who had managed to surprise him, sneaking up and catching him off guard, setting up the opportunity for Jon. But it was Jon who had driven his sword into his chest. 

He hadn't said very much of it but Arya told it beautifully: the black of the night sky, moonlight glinting off swords and dragonfire occasionally casting strange shadows on haggard faces; the clash of metal on metal providing sharp accents to the deep roars of anger and fear and pain; the sheer adrenaline coursing through their bodies, the energy like lightning at the ends of the fingers, infusing every moment with a sense of urgency. He had shattered, Arya said. He'd broken into a thousand tiny pieces that had fallen to the ground and laid shimmering in the moonlight like precious stones. And that had been it.

“Maybe now’s the time to start believing in them again.” Jon suggests. 

“I have been informed by your bride to be that they wouldn't deserve my belief,” she tells him. 

“I take it back then,” he says. “She's very rarely wrong.”

“Well, you're already excelling at acting like a husband,” she jokes. 

“Aye, I guess I am.” He laughs but there's no lightness about it - it's nervous and forced and he looks straight down at the ground. 

There’s a long pause after it dies out in which they both wonder whether they need to address the obvious discomfort.

Sansa pulls her lip between her teeth. It’s been a long time since they talked of anything as profound as fears but they’ve been sat here since the sun was still rising in the sky and it’s the first time that she’s felt anything close to what they had when they had thought they were the last Starks, sat by the fire in her room and trying to understand who they were. If there’s any time she could ask him about it it would be now. 

“You don’t seem happy about it,” she comments

He looks up at her at that, wishing she could’ve just ignored it. He sighs, so deeply that he can feel it in his chest, and there’s some comfort in imagining his lungs collapsing in on themselves. “It’s just, it’s just taking some getting used to,” he explains.

“What is it that troubles you?”

“Oh Sansa.” She had always thought herself the mature one - worldly and wise beyond her years. But she can’t sit there and pretend to know the answers to all of his problems, ones that he barely knows exist.

What troubles him? He doesn’t know. Too much to be able to recognise just one single thing in the muddy sea of lost he feels.

“If I ask you a question do you promise you’ll answer it honestly?”

He nods.

There’s a deep sadness and sympathy in her eyes that walk far too close to pity as she asks, “If it weren’t for the child would you still marry her?”

He looks away, his silence telling her everything she needs to know.

“She cares for you very deeply,” Sansa points out, not that it needed saying. “Maybe consider… It might be better for her in the long run if you don’t do this.” It’s harsh but she thinks that he maybe needs to hear this. To love so deeply and never have that in return… it’s not easy and Daenerys certainly deserves more than that.

“If it were not for the child I would not be marrying her but even the gods could not stop me from loving her.” He means it. She can see in his eyes that his heart is behind every word that he says.

It is perhaps wrong of her to feel the tinge of sadness that runs through at the realisation of the truth in his words but she doesn’t bother to ignore it or try to pretend she’s not feeling it. She doesn’t want this.

_ He was always going to marry. You know that right? _ She can hear Arya’s words in the back of her mind but that’s not the point. Yes, he was always going to marry but Sansa had thought that he’d marry a northern lass and they’d settle in Winterfell and there would be little princes and princesses of the North running through the halls for Sansa to dote on. His marriage isn’t the problem – it’s who he’s marrying and where she will take him.

It was the moment Bran told him of his true heritage, the moment he chose to run and hide in the wood for days... she should have known then that she had lost him. As much as she could've hoped that he would continue to call the North his home after the war, it was in that moment the world shifted so that it would never be the case. Perhaps Jon Snow belonged in the walls of Winterfell but Aegon Targaryen, he belonged to the blue skies and hot sands of the south. Even if he had cut this thing with Daenerys off she was certain she couldn't convince him to stay.

Bran’s already told her he must head North and she's sure Arya won't stay. She'll be alone again. 

The pack survives, her father had said, and yet they were all dispersing again, as they had done just before everything had fallen apart. Who could know how terrible it would be this time?

Or how wonderful, she thinks. Because Arya won't be happy unless she's allowed to roam free and discover everything the world has to offer. And Bran had an important role now, in ensuring the world does not fall to darkness again. And Jon loves Daenerys. And who was she to take that from them just so she could be happy.  She'd find purpose here, and she would find happiness in that. 

She studies his face. He has aged past his years (as has she) but there’s a melancholy to him that has always been there. It sometimes makes her laugh how good he is at thinking himself the victim. He has been handed a kingdom and a queen and a dragon and still he looks as he did when he was merely a bastard boy with the whole world pitted against him.

Looking up he catches her eye and his brows furrow at the sight of the soft smile on her face. “What?” he huffs out, his voice gruff and harsh as the cold biting at her fingertips.

She shakes her head. “You could have a wonderful life. She loves you so much and you have a child on the way - a beautiful child. It’s a life most can only dream of. It would be a sin to waste even a second of it worrying whether it’s right or whether you deserve it or whatever it is that’s holding you back. Maybe it’s not right, maybe you don’t deserve it but why should that matter? Let it go, forget about it. It doesn’t matter who you are or who you’ve been. Nothing matters except your love for each other.”

He looks at her then in a way he has never done and she hopes he is realising that she has grown from the child who played in these woods all those years ago. 

“I was hoping to ask you something Sansa.” Jon says, face returning once again to the guarded expression that it usually wears. “The child, when we ride south will you look after them.”

She can feel her heart swelling and she worries she might burst with joy. It will be nice, to have someone around in the big castle that can quickly become so lonely. A reminder that Jon and Dany are out there, that there are people who care for her. But more than that it's the fact that Jon would trust her with his child, the most precious thing in anyone's life, that makes it feel like she's grown into something that's worthy.

“And if we lose, you won’t let them take our babe.”

She can’t bear the thought of it - another Jon Snow, shipped off to some Northern Lord to live a life under a fake name, to never truly know their past for fear that it would be then end of them. “Yes” she agrees anyway “aye of course.”


	9. 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay, wedding, romance, dancing, an ending that's not really an ending, but at least it's a happy one (and still better than the garbage the show turned out so)!

The first wedding of course takes place in the sept. It is the rightful queen of the seven kingdoms who is to marry so it is more tradition than anything that dictates that the wedding must happen before the new gods when neither party involved believes in them.   
Sansa stands in the crowds of people that are packed into a place that was not meant for ceremonies of this size. It’s mainly the Southerners, and those who followed Daenerys across the Narrow Sea. A lot of the Northern Lords had refused to come to the ceremony in the sept, and would see them married only before the old gods.

There’s such a happiness in the room that Sansa finds herself lost in the moment, admiring the building and the decorations and the couple, Daenerys looking radiant in a southern style turquoise gown that flares out dramatically at the waist and does an excellent job of hiding the way her stomach has swelled. She's about 5 months along now and it's becoming harder and harder to hide beneath loose clothing. But soon most of the northern lords will leave and she won't have to be around people so often.

Jon’s cloaked in black and red accents and Sansa tries not to be saddened that it's a dragon on his back instead of a wolf.

As they speak their vows to each other she can't ignore the intensity in their eyes and beaming smiles. They'll be happy and that's the most important thing.

There are hundreds of people in the godswood standing around the heart tree as the sun is beginning to dip below the horizon, winter days still criminally short. In the twilight, Jon and Daenerys promise their lives to one another once again and despite the snow on the ground and the sun almost gone from the sky there's an undeniable warmth in the air. 

The crowds filter inside to the hall for a feast that rivals that of the night the armies had returned, night king defeated, and within no time the room is filled with laughter and excited voices (slurring only slightly).    
It's late in the evening when people push the long tables to the sizes of the room and start chanting "music!" at the top of their drunken voices.

The first song is a slow tune with pretty melody scratched out on a fiddle. Sansa can almost remember the words. They're at the back of her mind, somewhere, but the won't come to her. It was about a maiden, she thinks, and the knight who rescued her from the clutches of an evil monster in the depths of the ocean. As a young girl, it was one of her favourites.

Jon and Dany are dancing, her head resting on his shoulder, a crowd formed around them, and Sansa finds herself stood at the edge of the room.

“I do love a wedding,” Tyrion says as he comes to stand next to her.

“Really? I find I've gone off them.”

“Yes well, I have been to some rather awful ones,” he concedes.

They exchange smile. “This one is considerably better than any other I've been to though.”

He lifts his cup of wine and says “I'll drink to that,” before taking a long swig 

“I’ve realised it helps when you actually like both of the people getting married.”

He laughs. ”Yes I can imagine that might do it.”

“Not sure I can remember the last time I went to one where that was true.”

“Does that mean you didn't like me?” he asks.

“Sorry?”

“At our wedding,”

She laughs, a full and raucous sound. “Well, I had wanted to marry Loras Tyrell.” She points out. 

“Ah yes, a real shame. I'm sure you could've been very happy together,” he says drily.

“Oh, without a doubt. But it did mean I was rather disappointed with you.”

He fakes a scandalised expression, and draws in a sharp gasp. “I believe I made a fine substitute!”

“You did, I just didn't realise.” At the time she hadn't realised what marriages really are. “I haven't had the chance to thank you, for what you did for me.”

He wonders how that have built a world in which not raping a thirteen year old girl makes him a saint. 

“I didn’t know you were the best I could hope for.”

“No,” he protests. “No not at all. There are good people out there. You will find someone worthy of you.”   
Before Sansa can say anything the room erupts in cheers. On the floor Jon and Daenerys have come to a stop with the end of the song and they share a brief but sweet kiss before pulling away. For a moment the room stands still as they look at each other with such a tenderness. And then a new song starts, this one far more upbeat and exciting, and couples start flooding the floor and soon there's a proper dance going.  

“Can I have this dance, my lady?” Tyrion asks her.   
She smiles and says in a false, sickly sweet voice that he has not heard since their time as spouses, “How could I refuse my dear husband?”

He laughs, and knocks back the rest of his cup of wine before taking her hand and leading her toward the makeshift dance floor that a sea of people have already started gliding across. Before he reaches it though she tugs on his arm and indicates for him to follow her to one of the tables that has been pushed aside to make room for the dancers. She gestures to the bench and he climbs atop it. Drawing himself up he stands as tall as her. 

“You always were too clever for your own good.”

“Oh I do try,” she laughs.

There's only so much you can do when dancing on a bench but the shuffle back and forth in time with the music and on occasion Tyrion will twirl her under his arm. It surprises her that Tyrion actually seems to know the dance, doing all the moves where possible. They stumble about laughing and dancing and making comments about the other people in the room. She’d forgotten his humour that came from his wit and now that she’s older, and less scared of the world around her she finds that he’s a lot of fun.

There’s a break in the music as the band go to refill their glasses and Tyrin sits and tries to catch his breath. “Oh gods,” he grins. “Who could’ve guessed I might end up here. In Winterfell, dancing with the lovely Sansa Stark, celebrating the wedding of Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen, and enjoying it so much.”   
She takes a seat next to him. “I’m beginning to learn to like the unpredictability of the world at the minute.”

He smiles.   
  
The musicians begin taking their places again and people begin finding partners.

“Oh god,” Tyrion groans.

“What?” Sansa asks, head snapping up to look at him. He jerks his head, and she looks across the room to see what he was pointing out.

Brienne’s blushing deeply as Jamie takes her arm and they line up with the other couples. She looks back to Podrick for a second and he nods at her, smiling.

“She’d stay away from him if she had any sense.”

“Mm Hmm,” she hums.

It’s obvious she’s not listening and when he looks back at her she’s smiling across the room. And then the music starts up again and she looks away, blushing. “Let’s dance!” she says, too brightly, and jumping up. 

It’s a slower song than the ones earlier in the night so they’re back to making their way up and down the bench.

“He's a good lad, you know,” Tyrion tells her.

She blushes. “Who?”

“Oh come now, Lady Stark.”

She tries to smile but it comes out as a grimace, “I don't know if I want that any more.”

“What,” he asks.

“Romance, knights in shining armour.” It was all she had wanted as a child but she’s not sure if she’s strong enough to trust anyone that much, not anymore.

It’s such tragic thing to hear. “Is it not worth a try?”

She doesn't answer him.

“Go on, dance with him. If only out of obligation to me.”

She gives him a look that tells him she thinks it’s time he stopped talking but it’s a look he’s seen so many times in his life that he’s all but immune to it now.

“Well you can't be seen dancing with me all night,” he continues. “People will talk.”

“Tyrion,” she says, exasperated.

“I promise you, I’ll stop pushing it if you just dance with him once.”

“Okay, okay . I will.”

Jon comes and asks her for a dance next and he thanks her. “I can be a grumpy sod sometimes, I know.” he explains when she asks what she’s done. “I just manage to forget that I'm allowed to be happy.”

And then she’s moving away to the edge of the room again as a group of wildlings come and lift him high into the air, and parade him around the room, jeering and laughing.

He quickly scans the room, looking for Arya. She’d moved from the high table to sit at the other end of the hall as soon as she could, a swarm of them around the end of one of the long tables near the back. Sansa recognised a couple of them to be stableboys and a few of the girls from the kitchens as well. They had been arm-wrestling earlier, the girls watching on whilst the lads tried to impress them. It had been very gratifying to see Arya beat them, arrogance knocked out of them in an instant. There had only been two of them who tried it before they all backed off.

They’re still sat at the same table, now at an odd angle, clearly disturbed in the redesigning of the room. Hot Pie's talking - a large boy who Arya had insisted on introducing to her, said that he helped her, that she owed him a great deal.  It looks like he’s recounting a story, hands flying about as he tells it and all of the faces look enraptured.   
Arya sits at the very end of the table  slicing off slivers of apple and munching on them thoughtfully. She'll add little comments now and again, sometimes only a word or so but it seems as if she's the only one but Hot Pie who's allowed to speak.

She cuts another slice of apple and brings it to her mouth before stopping a second, her eyes catching on something at the other side of the room. She quickly looks away, but Sansa has already caught her gaze and follows it to find Gendry walking across the room. Gendry Davos' friend, the one who'd saved Jon when he’d travelled beyond the wall in that ridiculous attempt to convince Cersei of the danger.

She hadn't even realised Arya had known him, further than the little they’d heard when he’d returned with Jon. Maybe they met in the war?   
Sansa looks back to Arya, a grin now on her lips as she attempts to appear interested in what Hot Pie is saying. But she not focussed on him and it's a couple of beats after the table erupts in raucous laughter that she joins in. 

Gendry joins the table and Hot Pie rises to give him a long hug and they exchange happy words. He goes to the end of the table and pulls up a chair next to Arya. If she hadn't caught them earlier she might not have noticed the almost imperceptible way that Arya leans into him.

It's a strange thing to see and Sansa can't quite understand it. Surely Arya  would have told her if there was someone. 

But she watches as the conversation continues, Hot Pie talking again and someone tries to speak up, and is immediately silenced by everyone else at the table. And in amongst all of this Gendry leans into whisper in Arya’s ear and Sansa realises that she clearly has missed something enormous in Arya’s life.

She’s suddenly reminded of how little she understands her siblings, that no matter how long they had had together running through these halls, they spent the most important years of their life apart. She doesn’t often allow herself to imagine what could’ve been if they hadn’t gone South, if their father hadn’t been such a just and honest man. Her and Arya would’ve grown out of the fighting and she would’ve been the first to hear about any boys that she’d liked, could’ve helped her choose dresses to wear to dinners and dances, and as she herself had mellowed she perhaps would’ve allowed Arya to teach her how to look after herself, how to hunt or fight and how to be brave and strong even when the odds were stacked against you. Maybe she’d have the chance to learn that because she wanted to and not because she had to.

“Are you okay?” 

She jumps at the sound of the voice behind her and lets out a sigh of relief when she turns to see Podrick. “Yes, I was just..off in my own thoughts,” she reassures him.

“It’s a party, my lady,” he reminds her. “No time for thinking.”

He has a warm smile and kind eyes and she can hear Tyrion’s voice in the back of her head asking ‘ _ Isn’t it worth a try? _ ’.

“I don’t have anyone to dance with,” she tells him.

His smile widens. “Would you do me the honour of allowing me a dance, my lady?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, did I ever mention that I'm a sucker for romance. Genuinely ashamed to finish with such a cheesy ending but what's a girl to do.  
> Thanks to everyone who's read this and especially those who've commented. I've learned a lot of things about Westeros that I never woulda known so cheers guys.  
> I recognise that this is not really an ending and I have an idea for a kinda epilogue that would tie up some (of the many, m a n y) loose ends but as of now I'm in exam season and also, as I said, so done with Game of Thrones that I can't imagine finishing it. But never say never.


End file.
